FDA-D.1705-2023
Parts
Object number
FDA-D.1705-2023
Object type
Identification
Title
La Vallée de l’Ourthe à Méry
Winding River
Winding River
Title Type
assigned by artist
Common name
Common name
Description
Painted landscape view of a winding river with cliffs and vegetation in the foreground
Comments
This work was reproduced as an illustration to Quatre Artistes Liégeois (Four Artists from Liège, published 1907), a book by Belgian journalist and writer Maurice des Ombiaux. Des Ombiaux devoted himself to championing the culture of the Wallonia region of southern Belgium and promoting its artists. As well as writing on Donnay and his work, des Ombiaux commissioned the artist to produce six illustrations for his 1899 short novel Jeux de Coeur (Games of the Heart). Most of Donnay’s landscape views were painted in the Ourthe Valley in Belgium, close to his home in the village of Méry. After Donnay’s suicide in 1921, a bas relief memorial portrait of the artist by Belgium sculptor Georges Petit (1879–1958) was positioned on the crest of a hillside in the valley. Lettering below the portrait translates as ‘before these horizons Auguste Donnay, painter and poet, heard the soul of his country sing’.
Other number
FDA-P.599-2023
Description
Dimensions
height (actual size): 451mm
width (actual size): 701mm
width (actual size): 701mm
Material
gouache
Materials & techniques note
Gouache on board
Production
Person
Donnay, Auguste, 1862 - 1921 (Artist)
Date
c.1906
Technique
painted
History and association
Object history note
Provenance: Collection of Richard Henry Allen Amis (K.S. 1945-50; 1932-2018); by whom bequeathed to Eton College
Exhibited: 'An Etonian Collector: The Richard Amis Bequest', The Verey Gallery, Eton College, 16 November 2023 to 24 March 2024
Exhibited: 'An Etonian Collector: The Richard Amis Bequest', The Verey Gallery, Eton College, 16 November 2023 to 24 March 2024
