French school of the 19th century

French school of the XIX century.
"Landscape" and "Navy".
Pair of oils on canvas adhered to board.
Signed "Brun" in the lower right corner.
The golden frames have some lack of polychrome.
Measurements: 15 x 20 cm; 33 x 38 cm (frame).

From the cave paintings until the 18th century, nature rarely appeared in pictorial works as a landscape to be valued by itself. It is attributed to Chinese artists, from the 5th century onwards, the merit of 'discovering' the landscape as a pictorial element, under the influence of Buddhism and its conception of nature. In Europe, however, the protagonism of landscape did not appear until the Renaissance, progressively increasing its presence in works of art and becoming an object of interest in its own right and not as a background for a religious composition or a portrait. But it did not gain the status of a pictorial genre until the 17th century in Holland, a country that developed an important landscape school. In the 19th century, the Dutch example became universal, becoming one of the objectives of pictorial realism, especially in France through the Barbizon School and plenairism. This new interest in capturing a fleeting moment of light or an anecdote, in the middle of nature, encouraged the use of techniques such as watercolor, with a faster execution, and the loose brushstroke in search of an impression rather than a drawing, one of the keys to impressionism.