Painting by Tony François de Bergue titled Snow-covered Normandy coast

Oil on panel signed lower right. Tony François de Bergue is a marine painter, lithographer and engraver.

He received his artistic training at the Ecole Royale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet. It was with this master that he developed his love of marine subjects. In Nicolas Gosse's class, he practiced genre and historical painting.

He exhibited for the first time at the Salon in 1847, and again in 1861. His travels in southern France, Spain and Portugal enabled him to bring back numerous scenes of Mediterranean and Manche harbors and shores. His touch, precise and meticulous in his early works, broadened and became freer over the years. He became increasingly interested in the effects of light, and while he continued to faithfully render the rigging of the ships he painted.