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Paris museums reign supreme for viewing Barbizon paintings
Several U.S. museums display works by Barbizon School painters, but the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay have outstanding collections.
Around 1850, American artists and collectors discovered Fontainebleau Forest, including the New England painter
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But Paris is the inevitable destination for devotees, especially the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay, both of which contain parts of the Moreau-Nélaton collection acquired between 1840 and 1906, charting the development of French art in the 19th century.
At the Louvre, French painting from the period lines the Cour Carrée on the second floor of the Sully wing. If you get off the elevator in Room 64 you are faced with Théodore Rousseau's "Leaving the Forest of Fontainebleau" (1867), a poem of a painting that encapsulates the Barbizon reverence for nature.
Room 69 is a stunning repository of works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, including "A View of Fontainebleau," painted when the artist had just returned from his first trip to Italy.
Each room has a laminated information sheet. These are well worth reading, as they tell the story of the evolution of landscape painting in France.
Across the River Seine from the Louvre, the d'Orsay is an open art history book on French painting from the early 19th to the early 20th century, culminating in the museum's extraordinary Impressionist and post-Impressionist galleries.
There is a spot on the ground floor where you can see both
Tucked in a nearby alcove is Millet's soulful "L'Angelus" (1857-59), depicting peasants praying in a field outside the village of Barbizon, and a room around the corner is dedicated to the group of artists who painted there from about 1830 to 1860: Millet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Rousseau and others who taught the next generation of Impressionist revolutionaries such as Monet and Renoir that you have to go outside to paint the landscape.
 Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up. |
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