AMERICAN BARBIZON

In a charming village south of Paris, the elevation of landscape painting shaped a movement on the other side of the Atlantic.

- Vanessa Françoise Rothe

Today, impressionistic landscape paintings are among the most widely known and appreciated works of art ever created. However, just before the birth of impressionism in France, there was an important shift toward the acceptance of landscape as a subject in and of itself. Grand, large-scale realist landscapes, by a group of respected naturalist artists, were finally becoming accepted as a worthwhile painting subject. Painted in meticulous realism, with the revolutionary new focus on the changing times of day and the effects of light on the landscape, these highly accomplished tonalist works, and the group of artists who created them, would later become known as the Barbizon School of painters. What occurred in the 1820s to 1860s in the Forest of Fontainebleau and the charming village of Barbizon, just south of Paris, would shape the French art world and even French culture, and later the grand American landscape paintings that we know and love today.