A view of Orléans enters the collections

The Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans recently received a precious gift: Vue d'Orléans et de la Loire depuis la rive gauche, a panoramic view of Orléans and the Loire River, painted around 1827-1830 by landscape artist Christophe Civeton (1796-1830). This artist, who died prematurely at the age of 36, was a contemporary of Charles Pensée. He became best known for his drawn and lithographed urban views, notably of Paris.

It was as part of an ambitious project to produce 82 views of the chief towns of the French départements that Civeton stayed in Orleans in the 1820s. This delicate graphite pencil drawing, which offers a rare and precious view of the Orléans landscape at the time, is the result of this visit.

This work adds to a still limited corpus of views taken from the banks of the south bank of the Loire. It now sits alongside others in the Orléans museum collections, by Jan Peeters - one of which was recently exhibited in Étoiles du Nord - Aignan-Thomas Desfriches and Charles Pensée.

The museum would like to express its warmest thanks to Laurent Daussy, generous donor of this remarkable sheet, which aptly complements the historical view of Orléans through the centuries.