CHAIGNEAU JF Return of the Shepherd and His Flock at Sunset Oil on canvas, signed Certificate of Authenticity

CHAIGNEAU Jean Ferdinand (1830 / 1906)
The return of the shepherd and his flock at sunset.
Oil on canvas signed lower left.
46x55,5 cm
Certificate of authenticity.
Jean-Ferdinand Chaigneau, born on March 6, 1830 in Bordeaux, to Victorine Goethals and Jean-Frédéric Marius Chaigneau, and died on October 23, 1906 in Barbizon, was a French painter and engraver of the Barbizon School.
He is the nephew of the painter Raymond Eugène Goethals (1804-1864), a landscape and marine painter.
Ferdinand Chaigneau was a student of Jean-Paul Alaux, known as Gentil (1788-1858), in Bordeaux. He then entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1849 to study in the workshops of François-Édouard Picot, Jacques Raymond Brascassat, and Jules Coignet.
He exhibited for the first time at the Salon of 1848, where he presented his landscape Souvenir des environs de Bordeaux. Having unsuccessfully competed for the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1849 with The Death of Milo of Crotone (his painting was ranked 6th), he nevertheless won the 3rd prize for historical landscape from the Academy of Fine Arts in the 1854 competition with Lysidas and Moeris, which allowed him to become a resident of the city of Paris.
Chaigneau then turned away from history painting to devote himself to landscape and animal subjects, and to composing scenes of rural life. He participated in the 1855 Universal Exhibition, sending a canvas depicting a marsh in the Landes region. He continued to exhibit regularly at the Salons, initially with landscapes of the Gironde and the Landes, his native region, and then, from 1858 onward, drawing his inspiration from the verdant spectacle of the Fontainebleau forest. He thus became, along with Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, a member of the Barbizon School, where he settled in 1858 in his house, which he named La Bergerie (The Sheepfold). It was there that his son, Charles-Paul Chaigneaux (1879-1938), was born, who, like his father, would produce pastoral scenes in the same vein.
He was particularly renowned during his lifetime for his animal painting, characterized by his talent for depicting flocks of sheep from the Chailly plain in the landscapes he painted—a technique that became something of a trademark. He was also a respected engraver, author of an album of six plates, Landscapes and Sheep (1862), and later of twelve original etchings entitled Journey Around Barbizon, printed respectively by Auguste Delâtre and Alfred Cadart. Furthermore, in 1880 he published a Project for the Reorganization of the Annual Fine Arts Exhibitions.
From his marriage to Louise Deger, he had four daughters and one son. Three of his daughters, Marguerite (cellist, 1875-1943), Suzanne (violinist, 1875-1946), and Thérèse (pianist, 1876-1968), formed a chamber music trio known as the "Trio Chaigneau." Suzanne was the mother of the singer Irène Joachim (1913-2001), herself the granddaughter of the violinist Joseph Joachim. His son, Charles-Paul Chaigneau, would also become a painter.
Ferdinand Chaigneau died on October 23, 1906, in Barbizon, the village where he lived, and is buried there with his daughter Suzanne. Besides French museums, his paintings are held in North American public collections, as well as in Brazil and Japan.

Public collections
In France :
Amiens, Picardy Museum.
Barbizon, departmental museum of the Barbizon School.
Bordeaux, Museum of Fine Arts.
Louviers Museum.
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.
paris:
Department of Graphic Arts of the Louvre Museum: collection of drawings.
Musée d'Orsay: Herd in the Moonlight.
Rennes, Museum of Fine Arts
The UK
Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery
Violindingres.fr