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Matin à Villeneuve is an oil painting on canvas in a vertical format with dimensions 153.7 x 127 cm (60.5 by 50 in), signed by Henri Biva (lower left).
This highly detailed work depicts a morning scene at the Villeneuve-l'étang park, located just outside Paris in the western suburb of Marnes-la-Coquette (Seine-et-Oise), France. The artist has chosen a quiet section of the park with a view facing towards the east. The greenery suggests the work was painted en plein air during July or August, and possibly finished sometime later in Biva's Parisian atelier.
Unlike works of the Neo-Impressionists or Fauves, in vogue at the time, Biva has gone to great lengths to show even the most minute details of the scene, such as leaves and petals floating on the surface of the water; overlapping blades of grass; superimposed branches and leaves of varying size indicating distance from the observer; reflecting background trees in the rippling body of water; patches of raking sunlit shimmering seemingly at random throughout carefully selected sections of the composition.
This work of skillfully controlled artistry presents a dominant palette of green variously mixed and blended by the artist to form diverse tones, values and hues, contrasted only by the transpiercing light of the morning sky partly visible through the delicate foliage while bouncing off the surface of the shallows.
Henri Biva en plein air atelier Fauves Neo-Impressionists