Le bateau atelier (The Studio on the Boat or The floating studio)

Etching and drypoint with plate tone on laid paper, inscribed below the image borderline: (left) “Daubigny”; (right) “Imp. Delȃtre Paris”

Final state, II of II (Deteil) or III of III (Melot), published in the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", 1874, and printed by Auguste Delâtre.

“Le Bateau Atelier” from the series "Voyage en Bateau" [The Boat Trip], was first published in 1862 by Alfred Cadart (1828–75), Paris.

In 1857, in order to be even closer to his subject and to the water he loved to represent, the painter Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878) bought an old ferryboat which he had fitted with a cabin as a workshop boat. Every summer, aboard his Botin, he went to Auvers-sur-Oise, a few miles from Valmondois where he spent the first ten years of his life, making the island of Vaux his main home port. Accompanied by his ship's boy Karl, he also travelled the rivers, even going as far as Honfleur. When the Botin became too old, Daubigny had it pulled into the garden of his house-workshop in Auvers where the ferry would henceforth serve as a refreshment bar and shelter, a new unit replacing it on the water in 1868: the Bottin, more spacious and better equipped for navigation. This rapidly executed print captures a quiet moment in the cozy floating studio as the artist sketches the landscape through the boat's window.

Charles Francois Daubigny was a painter born in 1817 in Paris, France. A leading member of the Barbizon School, Daubigny rebelled against the conventions of his era by leaving his urban studio and traveling out into the countryside to paint directly from nature. His prints of peaceful pastoral scenes were especially popular among middle class city-dwellers who seldom got to experience such views in person. 

References

Melot, Graphic Art of the Pre-Impressionists, D111; Delteil, Le Peintre-Graveur Illustré - XIXe et XXe siècles, n. 111.