Matin à Villeneuve (Morning in Villeneuve), Henri Biva; oil on canvas, roughly 59 x 49 in. (151 x 125 cm); link is to Wikimedia Commons; original is in a private collection
French painter Henri Biva, who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gives us a beautifully idyllic scene of mprning on either a lake or a very calm river, I don’t know which.
Villeneuve is the former name of an area in Switzerland.
I particulary admire Biva’s facility with atmosphereic perspective. He pushes the far shore way back, but if you look at the large crops, you can see he’s given the area a good bit of texture and detail.
Just behind the bright patch of foliage at the edge of the far shore — pretty much directly in the center of the painting — you can see part of an arched bridge (images above, third down).
For more info, see my previous post on Henri Biva.
