Victor Marie Félix DANVIN
 (Paris, 1802 – Paris, 1842)

 Crosses and costumes of Tréport

 Oil on canvas
 Signed and dated lower right
 58 x 88 cm
 1838

 Exhibition :
  
 Paris Salon of 1838 under number 378. According to the catalogue, the painting remained the property of the artist after the Salon.
 A landscape painter, Victor Marie Félix Danvin was born in Paris in 1802. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts on September 3, 1818, and studied under Pierre Guérin (1774-1833) and Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760 - 1832). After a brief stint in the studio of Louis Etienne Watelet (1782-1866), he joined that of the brand new Prix de Rome winner, Jean Charles Joseph Rémond (1795-1875). From 1829, he traveled throughout Switzerland and various French provinces: Savoie, Dauphiné, Auvergne, Brittany and Normandy.
 Danvin made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1831 and exhibited there regularly in the following years. A professor at the École Polytechnique from 1840, he presented his works at the Salon until the posthumous exhibition in 1842.
 Following a second stroke - the first having struck him in February 1840 - he went to take the waters in Vichy in July 1841. Tired, he continued on his way to Thiers, then to Lyon, before returning to Paris, ill. Danvin died there on 13 February 1842, the victim of a ruptured aneurysm.

 Despite the brevity of his existence and the rarity of his works, Victor Danvin's paintings found an audience sensitive to this "wonderfully delicate and sensitive artist."

 His wife, Constance-Amélie, born Lambert in Lille on May 3, 1810, made her debut at the 1844 salon with an “Entrance to Vichy les Bains” and ceased to appear after the 1848 salon.

 Several of Danvin's works were reproduced by engravers such as Lhuillier or lithographers such as Challamel, in particular our painting Croix et costumes de Tréport, in the work La revue des peintres from 1838 printed by Aubert in Paris.
 Here is the descriptive extract:
 "Under this caption Cross and costumes of Tréport, Mr. Danvin shows us in his painting on the right and in the background the boats leaving the port one by one and heading towards the open sea to engage in fishing, while in the middle of his composition, at the foot of this cross which dominates a vast horizon, the wives and children of fishermen follow their husbands and fathers with their eyes for a long time, and implore God with ardent prayers to bless their nets and to grant them a happy and rich return.
 Mr. Danvin's fertile brush has allowed him to place before our eyes a large number of picturesque sites in our France."

 Museums : Montpellier, Honfleur.