The Barbizon School was a loose group of French landscape painters, including Theodore Rousseau, Jean-Francois Millet and Charles-Francois Daubigny, who gathered from the 1830s to the 1870s in and around the village of Barbizon on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau to paint directly from nature rather than compose idealized landscapes in the studio. Rejecting the grand historical and mythological landscape tradition still favored by the Academy, the group painted humble rural scenes and peasant labor with sober, close observation of light and atmosphere, Millet's The Gleaners and The Angelus among the movement's best-known works. The school's commitment to painting outdoors and its unglamorized view of rural life directly prepared the ground for Impressionism, whose painters, Monet especially, extended the Barbizon practice of working en plein air into a fuller study of shifting light.
Facts
Founded In PlaceBarbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, France 1 Key PrinciplePainting landscape and rural labor directly from observed nature, with sober attention to light and atmosphere, rejecting the idealized, studio-composed historical landscape favored by the Academy. 1 Connections
Associated With
Camille Corot was a leading and founding figure of the Barbizon Schools naturalistic landscape painting.
Jean-Francois Millet was one of the founding figures of the Barbizon School, painting rural peasant life around the village of Barbizon.
Expressed In
Influenced
Sources
1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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