,
Becquigny, Somme, c. 1857 The
Salon of 1824 in
Paris exhibited works of
John Constable, an English painter. His rural scenes influenced some of the younger artists of the time, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature. Natural scenes became the subjects of their paintings rather than mere backdrops to dramatic events. During the
Revolutions of 1848 artists gathered at Barbizon to follow Constable's ideas, making nature the subject of their paintings. The French landscape became a major theme of the Barbizon painters. In the spring of 1829,
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot came to Barbizon to paint in the
Forest of Fontainebleau. He had first painted in the forest at Chailly in 1822. He returned to Barbizon in the autumn of 1830 and in the summer of 1831, where he made drawings and oil studies, from which he made a painting intended for the Salon of 1830; "View of the Forest of Fontainebleau'" (now in the National Gallery in Washington) and, for the
Salon of 1831, another "View of the Forest of Fontainebleau"'. While there he met the members of the Barbizon school:
Théodore Rousseau,
Paul Huet,
Constant Troyon,
Jean-François Millet, and the young
Charles-François Daubigny. '',
Jean-François Millet, 1857.
Musée d'Orsay, Paris Millet extended the idea from
landscape to figures – peasant figures, scenes of peasant life, and work in the fields. In
The Gleaners (1857), for example, Millet portrays three peasant women
gleaning a wheat field after its harvest. By placing the paid harvesters and an overseer placed in the back of the painting, Millet shifted the focus and the subject matter from the prosperous to those at the bottom of the social ladder. During the late 1860s, the Barbizon painters attracted the attention of a younger generation of French artists studying in Paris. Several of those artists visited
Fontainebleau Forest to paint the landscape, including future
Impressionists Claude Monet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Alfred Sisley and
Frédéric Bazille. In the 1870s those artists, among others, developed the
art movement called
Impressionism and practiced
plein air painting. In contrast, the main members of the school made drawings and sketches on the spot, but painted back in their studios. The Post-Impressionist painter
Vincent van Gogh studied and copied several of the Barbizon painters as well, including 21
copies of paintings by Millet. He copied Millet more than any other artist. He also did three paintings in
Daubigny's Garden. Both Théodore Rousseau (1867) and Jean-François Millet (1875) died at Barbizon. ==Influence in Europe==