François Bossuet (1798–1889)
Ostend. The Plain Viewed from the Top of the Dunes to the West, n.d.

Oil on canvas
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Gift of Charles Hack and the Hearn Family Trust

Jeffery Howe
Professor Emeritus, Art History

Here, Bossuet demonstrates his fluency in the art of perspective as well as mastery of the technique of oil painting. The low horizon and expanse of clouds evoke a traditional setting prevalent in Netherlandish painting of the seventeenth century. Tiny figures add a sense of scale to the deep landscape. In the early 1830s Bossuet worked as a civil servant, before being appointed professor of perspective at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1835, after having published a two-volume book on the subject.