PERFECTIONIST: Théodore Rousseau devoted meticulous attention to the way he depicted trees in his paintings, as can been seen in Under the Birch
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FRANCE and SWITZERLAND VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
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PLUS LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
A new exhibition in Lyons finally gives the Barbizon School its due
In the mid-19th century, the hamlet of Barbizon, on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest, became a magnet for a large and disparate group of artists whose common causes were a love of nature and the desire to paint sur le motif, in the open air. A few of them, including Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, moved permanently to Barbizon; others just passed through, for a few weeks or months or years, among them Camille Corot, Jules Dupré and Charles-François Daubigny. At one point the forest attracted so many painters, said writers Jules and Edmond Goncourt, "that every tree seemed to be an artist's model, surrounded by boxes of paints."
The Barbizon artists have long been acclaimed as the precursors of the Impressionists, but oddly enough "The Barbizon School" at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyons (June 22-Sept. 9) is the first show of any size devoted to them in France. With 100 paintings by 46 artists, the exhibit also enlarges the usually defined 1840-60 Barbizon period to include the entire first half of the century, and limits the geographical perimeter to the very small circle of villages that border the forest.
The Barbizon group all met at the Auberge Ganne, where they were known as a fairly rowdy bunch, drinkers and pranksters. Their styles were dissimilar, but together — influenced by Turner, Constable and Bonington — they rejuvenated the minor genre of landcape painting and fought for its rightful place in the artistic pantheon.
Rousseau and Millet dominate the show, as they did the group. Rousseau first painted in Barbizon in 1833 and moved there permanently in 1848 because, he said, "I heard the voices of the trees." In works such as The Oak in the Rocks and The Way Out of the Forest, Fontainebleau, he tried to paint those trees in such precise detail that "you could hear the birds singing." Millet, the son of a Normandy peasant farmer, settled near Rousseau in 1849. Struggling to support his nine children, he finally found some public success with his strong portrayals of peasants at work in the fields, including Man With a Hoe (1862), in which the bent farmer in his wooden clogs seems rooted forever in the stony earth. The violent contrasts of nature were the favorite province of Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, the Bordeaux-born son of an exiled Spaniard, in windswept works like The Storm and The Heights of Jean-de-Paris, Forest of Fontainebleau.
By the 1860s the Barbizon painters had made their mark, and something even newer was brewing: among their disciples painting in the Fontainebleau Forest in 1863-1865 were Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille, represented by one painting each to top off the show. Within a few years Impressionism had been born, but that might never have happened without the Barbizon forerunners who first captured the light in the forest.
L'Ecole de Barbizon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Palais Saint-Pierre, 20 Place des Terreaux, Lyons 69001 • Open:June 22-Sept. 9 • Phone: + 33 (0)4 7210 1740 • Tickets: €5.50, €3 for concessions
