Barbizon

BARBIZON SCHOOL and THE

the nature of landscape

May 2 to July 21, 2008
MILDRED LANE KEMPER ART MUSEUM

THE BARBIZON SCHOOL and

THE NATuRE of LANdSCApE
R ACHEL KEITH

stately tree, its scalloped outline silhouetted against a cerulean sky, grows elegantly askew from a riverbank in Jules Dupré’s c. 1850 painting The River (Fig. 1). Two diminutive figures dwarfed beneath the sheltering canopy of the tree put its grand scale into perspective. The lone tree is the painting’s humble subject—not only does it take center stage within the composition and almost engulf the picture plane, but it is the only element of the painting that Dupré depicted with any degree of detail. This painting of a simple tree was typical of the modest landscapes of the Barbizon school, an informal group of artists, including JeanBaptiste-Camille Corot, Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Jules Dupré, François Louis Français, Charles Emile Jacque, Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon, and Théodore Rousseau, who lived and worked around the small farming village of Barbizon between 1830 and 1880. Perched on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, not far from Paris, the Barbizon area appealed to landscapists for its rich diversity of scenery, ranging from ancient forests to open countryside, and its reputation as a pristine setting untouched by the industrializing hand of modern man. This area seemed an ideal location for artists who sought to record rural life out of doors, or en plein air, through a supposedly unmediated relationship with nature.

A

THE BARBIZON SCHOOL

Fig. 1 (opposite)

Jules Dupré
FRENCH, 1811-1889

The River
c. 1850
Oil on canvas 21 3/16 x 17 7/8 in.

The retreat to a preindustrialized, unspoiled state of nature appealed not only to the painters of the Barbizon school, but was also immensely popular among the urban bourgeoisie who bought their paintings. Artists and patrons alike turned to nature—engaging it directly or through