Barbizon School

The Barbizon School was a group of nineteenth-century French landscape painters who worked near the village of Barbizon. Their direct study of nature helped establish landscape painting as an independent genre.

Théodore Rousseau: A French landscape painter and leading figure of the Barbizon School, known for detailed, expressive views of forests. His commitment to painting the Fontainebleau Forest helped define the group’s approach.
Landscape painting: Painting in which natural scenery is the principal subject. The Barbizon painters helped make this subject an independent genre.
Charles-François Daubigny: A French landscape painter associated with the Barbizon School and known for river scenes. His mobile studio and river subjects expanded the group’s practice of painting from nature.
Impressionism: A nineteenth-century art movement that emphasized modern life and the changing effects of light. Impressionist painters inherited the Barbizon commitment to outdoor observation.
Jean-François Millet: A French painter known for dignified depictions of rural labor and peasant life. His Barbizon-period work joined landscape with the lives of rural workers.
Oil sketch: A small oil painting made as a study or as a finished work. Quick oil studies let painters record nature’s changing effects on site.
Jules Dupré: A French landscape painter associated with the Barbizon School, known for dramatic skies and wooded scenes. His expressive treatment of weather shows the range of moods within the group.
École de Crozant: A loose group of landscape painters who worked around the Creuse Valley in France. Later French landscape colonies extended the Barbizon model of working in a distinctive rural setting.
Camille Corot: A French landscape painter whose carefully observed scenes bridged Neoclassicism and modern painting. His landscapes helped prepare the ground for the group’s direct study of nature.
Tonalism: A painting style that unifies a scene through subdued colors and closely related tones. The group’s restrained tonal harmonies made landscapes feel coherent and atmospheric.

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