Barbizon school, an informal school of French landscape painting that flourished c.1830-1870. Its name derives from the village of Barbizon, a favorite residence of the painters associated with the school. Théodore Rousseau was the principal figure of the group, which included the artists Jules Dupré, Narciso Diaz de la Peña, Constant Troyon, and Charles Daubigny. These men reacted against the conventions of classical landscape and advocated a direct study of nature. Their work was strongly influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape masters including Ruisdael, Cuyp, and Hobbema. Corot and Millet are often associated with the Barbizon group, but in fact Corot's poetic approach and Millet's humanitarian outlook place them outside the development of the school. The Barbizon painters helped prepare for the subsequent development of the impressionist schools. Paintings of the Barbizon school were very popular with American collectors of the late 19th and early 20th cent. and influenced American painters of this period. The school is well represented in American collections, notably the Corcoran Gallery, the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Group of 19th-century French landscape painters. They were part of a larger European movement toward naturalism that made a significant contribution to realism in French landscape painting. Led by Theodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, they attracted a large following of painters who came to live at Barbizon, a village near Paris; most notable of this group were Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse-Virgile Díaz de la Peña, Jules Dupré, Charles-Émile Jacque, and Constant Troyon. Each had his own style, but all emphasized painting out-of-doors directly from nature, using a limited palette, and creating atmosphere or mood in their landscapes.

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The Barbizon school (circa 1830–1870) of painters is named after the village of Barbizon near Fontainebleau Forest, France, where the artists gathered.

The Barbizon painters were part of a movement towards realism in art which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time.

In 1824 the Salon de Paris exhibited works of John Constable. His rural scenes influenced some of the younger artists of the time, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature. Natural scenes became the subjects of their paintings rather than mere backdrops to dramatic events.

During the Revolutions of 1848 artists gathered at Barbizon to follow Constable's ideas, making nature the subject of their paintings.

One of them, Jean-François Millet, extended the idea from landscape to figures — peasant figures, scenes of peasant life, and work in the fields. In The Gleaners (1857), Millet portrays three peasant women working at the harvest. There is no drama and no story told, merely three peasant women in a field.

The leaders of the Barbizon school were Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny; other members included Jules Dupré, Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, Charles Olivier de Penne, Henri Harpignies, Albert Charpin, Félix Ziem, François-Louis Français and Alexandre DeFaux.

Both Rousseau (1867) and Millet (1875) died at Barbizon.

Charpin Albert Original from Grasse, France, in 1842, died in Asnieres in 1924. A pupil of Daubigny, painter of natural landscapes with shepherds girls and her guardian dog taking care of the animals, cows and sheep. It is characteristic of his paintings the quaint and serenity of his actors, in a context of early morning light, with cloudy skies. One of his paintings "Le Retour à la Ferme" is found at the Musèe des Beaux-Arts de Chambery. He is well known member of the Barbizon School. His paintings are found in Museums and private collections in Europe, America an Official Sites of Latin America, like Argentina and Brazil.

See also

• Gustave Courbet
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
• Karl Bodmer
• H. I. Marlatt
• American Barbizon school
• Art colony
• Naturalism (art)
• landscape art

References

Joconde-Catalogues des Collections des Musees de France. Ministère de la culture

External links

• Hecht Museum