School of Barbizon

The school of Barbizon holds its name of the village of Barbizon, located close to the Forêt of Fontainebleau (Seine-et-Marne). Its founding members were Corot, Rousseau, Millet and Daubigny. Belonged to the group Charles Jacque, Dupre, Constant Troyon, Diaz, Harpignies, Ziem, Eugene Lavieille, Jules Breton, Jean Ferdinand Chaigneau, Jules Jacques Veyrassat…

At the beginning of the 19th century, the criteria Artistique S had been fixed around the neo-classic tradition , in the continuation of the painter Jacques-Louis David. In margin of this Academism, the Romanticism formalized by Géricault, Bonington and Delacroix became extensive.

In 1824, the living room of Paris exposed some of works of Constable. Its rural scenes had a decisive influence on younger artists, carrying out them to give up the formalism of the time and to draw their own inspiration from the Nature: they produced often rural fabrics, moving away from a return to the mythological dramas .

During the revolution of 1848, the painters whom one would gather soon under the school of Barbizon joined together and chose to follow deliberately the precepts of John Constable, in order to return the prone Nature itself their paintings. Among them, Millet extended its vision of the Paysage S to the characters, painting the farming community and the agricultural work. Glaneuses (1857) is a perfect example, showing three country-women occupied with glaner after harvest, without setting in dramatic scene nor demonstration, but simply an evocation of the simple life.

Rousseau (1867) and Millet (1875) died in Barbizon.

It is necessary to await 1890 to see the term of " School of Barbizon" to appear, in the work of the Scottish art critic David Croal Thomson entitled: The Barbizon School off Painters . Since, this term is called into question by the historians of art who dispute the idea that there would have been a " école" with Barbizon. There would be more business with a unit of painters to the very different styles, which, at very diverse times, found a source of inspiration in the Forêt of Fontainebleau.

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