Barbizon School (painting)
The Barbizon School refers to a group of French painters active primarily in the early to mid-nineteenth century, who resided in the village of Barbizon near the forest of Fontainebleau. This informal collective is recognized for its significant contributions to landscape painting, marking a shift in artistic focus away from historical and religious themes towards the natural environment. Emerging from the romantic movement, the Barbizon artists pioneered techniques that emphasized direct observation of nature, paving the way for the Impressionist movement that followed. Notable figures associated with this school include Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Jean-François Millet, each bringing unique perspectives to their work, with Millet also incorporating rural scenes featuring peasant life.
The Barbizon painters rejected the idealized visions of earlier landscape traditions, instead seeking to depict nature in its raw form. Their approach not only elevated landscape painting's status within the art community but also influenced contemporaneous movements such as realism and later impressionism. Artists from abroad were drawn to Barbizon, contributing to its legacy and inspiring future generations, notably in the United States. While initially met with skepticism, the Barbizon School eventually gained recognition, thanks in part to the support of art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who showcased their work to a broader audience. The movement thrived from the 1830s until the 1870s, leaving a lasting impact on the evolution of modern art.
Barbizon School (painting)
The Barbizon school refers to an informal group of French painters who were installed at the small village of Barbizon (Seine-et-Marne), in the forest of Fontainebleau, sixty-one kilometres away from Paris. The artists specialized in and gave new perspectives to landscape painting. The Barbizon school emerged in the early nineteenth century and its activities lasted until the 1870s, about the time the term "Barbizon school" was introduced to describe the style practiced by this group of artists. The school came out of romanticism and is considered to be the precursor of impressionism while it was largely associated with the unidealized landscapes and peasant scenes of the realist movement. The most famous representatives of the Barbizon school are Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Virgilio Diaz de la Peña, Alexandre Defaux, Henri Harpignies and Charles-François Daubigny.
Brief History
The history of the Barbizon school is associated with the change in status of landscape painting in academic training at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Until then landscape painting was considered to be an inferior artistic genre. The shift of interest to landscape painting was largely motivated by the establishment of a Prix de Rome section for historic landscape in the second decade of the century. This fact not only raised the competition among landscape painters, but also underlined the necessity for innovation of technique and approach to the subject matter. The presentation of a series of landscapes by the English romantic painter John Constable at the 1824 salon offered new perspectives to the study of nature and affected decisively the style of the painters of the Barbizon school. Many artists, including those of the Barbizon school, sought to distance themselves from the Italian academic landscapes of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, attempting to rehabilitate the idea of pure landscape deprived of narration. They subsequently moved to natural environments outside Paris and produced open-air sketches from nature. The forest of Fontainebleau turned out to be the French equivalent of the Italian landscape. Rousseau was the first to move to Barbizon in 1848, after a series of occasional visits. Diaz followed him and became his student. Millet was installed with his family in Barbizon about a year later and started working from nature, with the difference that, unlike other Barbizon artists who painted exclusively landscapes, he introduced rural scenes with figures of peasants in his paintings. The rest of the artists followed soon after.
Impact
The Barbizon school of painters stemmed from romanticism and exerted considerable influence to both the realist and the impressionist movements. Although foreign artists were associated with the school, it is considered to be a French art movement. Barbizon school art may be viewed as a reaction against both the classic tradition and Italian landscape painting. The group was informal, though its members shared in common their interest in open-air landscape painting and their attraction to the natural environment of Barbizon. The school turned landscape into an independent subject matter, while its direct observation of nature opened the road to the impressionists to further appreciate and explore the possibilities of the natural environment in their art. Realist painter Gustave Courbet, influenced by the prominent place given to landscape painting by the artists of the school, produced large scale canvases with rural scenes, peasants, and animals. Previously, large scale paintings depicted exclusively historical and/or religious scenes.
The Barbizon painters were not homogenous in their style and techniques. Millet included narratives in his paintings in the form of rustic scenes, for example, while Corot was never installed at Barbizon but instead paid frequent visits to the village to observe nature, returning to his studio to paint either from memory or from preliminary sketches that he produced at the Fontainebleau forest. Millet taught his techniques to his American student, William Morris Hunt, who spent three years in Barbizon. Hunt started painting in the style of the Barbizon school transferring its ideas to the United States. However the style was poorly received in America until, at least, the last decade of the century. Other artists associated with the American Barbizon school included William Keith, Winslow Homer, Horatio Walker, and George Inness.
The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a few other movements that were comparable to or influenced by the Barbizon school. These include Nagybánya artist’s colony in Hungary in the 1890s; the Macchiaioli group of Italian painters, who were active in Tuscany after the mid-1850s; and the Hudson River school in the United States. The Barbizon school also attracted many foreign artists that moved to the village to study painting under the Barbizon masters, notably the Romanian Nicolae Grigirescu, the Italian Antonio Fontanesi, and the Swiss Karl Bodmer.
The Barbizon artists presented regularly their works at the Parisian salon, however their art was poorly received during the first years of their activity. The Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel became a patron of the artists of the Barbizon school organizing several exhibitions of their works, introducing to the French public the techniques and style that impressionism would later further develop.The activities of the French masters of the Barbizon school lasted from the 1830s to the 1870s. After that period, many impressionist artists, including Pierre-August Renoir, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley, followed the example of the painters of Barbizon and visited Fontainebleau to paint landscapes en plain air (in the open air).
Bibliography
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Amory, Dita. "The Barbizon School: French Painters of Nature." Heibrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (March 2007). Online.
Beard, Dorothea. "Barbizon School." Oxford Art Online. Web. 21 May 2015
Chantal, Georgel. Millet. Paris: Citadelles Mazenod, 2014. Print.
Herbert, Robert. "Naïve Impressions from Nature: Millet’s Readings, from Montaigne to Charlotte Brontë." The Art Bulletin 3.89 (2007): 540–561. Print.
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Kurlander, Amy. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: Unpublished Drawings. New York: Jill Newhouse Gallery, 2012. Print.
Kurlander, Amy, and Kelly, Simon, eds. The Untamed Landscape: Theodore Rousseau and the Path to Barbizon. New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, 2014. Print.
Miquel, Rolande, and Miquel Pierre. Théodore Rousseau: 1812–1867. Paris: Somogy, 2010. Print.
Waller, Susan. "Rustic Poseurs: Peasant Models in the Practice of Jean-Francois Millet and Jules Breton." Art History 2.31 (April 2008): 187–210. Print.