GENERAL DESCRIPTION
This painting is typical of the landscapes of the Barbizon school, a group of French painters during the mid-19th century who worked in and around the Forest of Fontainebleau, specifically the village of Barbizon, some thirty-five miles southeast of Paris. Their goals were to rediscover the magic of untouched nature remote from the urban center and to celebrate the natural world in all its commonplace, unembellished details. In this work, we see a grove of oaks, their gnarled trunks dramatically illuminated by a few shafts of light that penetrate the otherwise somber forest. Many of the naturalist qualities represented in this painting eventually influenced the development of impressionism.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label copy, 2003.
NOTES
Created 1868
Checked Piction
Dorothy Kosinski, "Forest of Fontainebleau", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 103.
Narcisse DIaz de La Peña's Forest of Fontainebleau is prototypical of the landscapes of the Barbizon school. The subject is a grove of oaks, their gnarled trunks dramatically illuminated by a few shafts of light that penetrate the otherwise somber forest. A dense canopy of branches entwines overhead into an oval which seems to frame the forest enclave.
The painters of the Barbizon school worked in the forest of Fontainebleau and village of Barbizon, southeast of Paris, in the mid-nineteenth century. Influenced by John Constable, Richard Bonington, and the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape tradition, they reveled in the quiet beauty of rural France, preferring its landscape to the Italian countryside or Alpine vistas that had fascinated earlier artists. Their goals were to rediscover the magic of untouched nature and to celebrate the natural world in all its commonplace, unembellished details. Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this new mode of landscape painting was Pierre-Étienne-Théodore Rousseau, who had a profound influence on Diaz.
The Barbizon artists worked out of doors, en plein air, to create the drawings and oil sketches that became the basis for oil sketches that became the basis for oil paintings finished in the studio. Their work before the motif and their attention to ephemeral conditions of light and weather are consistent with the naturalist reevaluation of landscape painting at midcentury which informed the evolution of impressionism.
Diaz de la Peña, Narcisse–Virgile (French, 1807-1876)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: Barbizon (France): TGN: 7008938
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WEB RESOURCES
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC~Read a biography of the artist from the NGA.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Check out another view of the forest of Fontainebleau by Diaz de la Peña.
- Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri~Read this spotlight essay on Narcisse–Virgile Diaz de la Peña from the Kemper Art Museum.
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General Description
This painting is typical of the landscapes of the Barbizon school, a group of French painters during the mid-19th century who worked in and around the Forest of Fontainebleau, specifically the village of Barbizon, some thirty-five miles southeast of Paris. Their goals were to rediscover the magic of untouched nature remote from the urban center and to celebrate the natural world in all its commonplace, unembellished details. In this work, we see a grove of oaks, their gnarled trunks dramatically illuminated by a few shafts of light that penetrate the otherwise somber forest. Many of the naturalist qualities represented in this painting eventually influenced the development of impressionism.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label copy, 2003.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC~Read a biography of the artist from the NGA.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Check out another view of the forest of Fontainebleau by Diaz de la Peña.
- Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri~Read this spotlight essay on Narcisse–Virgile Diaz de la Peña from the Kemper Art Museum.
Notes
Created 1868
Checked Piction
Dorothy Kosinski, "Forest of Fontainebleau", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 103.
Narcisse DIaz de La Peña's Forest of Fontainebleau is prototypical of the landscapes of the Barbizon school. The subject is a grove of oaks, their gnarled trunks dramatically illuminated by a few shafts of light that penetrate the otherwise somber forest. A dense canopy of branches entwines overhead into an oval which seems to frame the forest enclave.
The painters of the Barbizon school worked in the forest of Fontainebleau and village of Barbizon, southeast of Paris, in the mid-nineteenth century. Influenced by John Constable, Richard Bonington, and the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape tradition, they reveled in the quiet beauty of rural France, preferring its landscape to the Italian countryside or Alpine vistas that had fascinated earlier artists. Their goals were to rediscover the magic of untouched nature and to celebrate the natural world in all its commonplace, unembellished details. Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this new mode of landscape painting was Pierre-Étienne-Théodore Rousseau, who had a profound influence on Diaz.
The Barbizon artists worked out of doors, en plein air, to create the drawings and oil sketches that became the basis for oil sketches that became the basis for oil paintings finished in the studio. Their work before the motif and their attention to ephemeral conditions of light and weather are consistent with the naturalist reevaluation of landscape painting at midcentury which informed the evolution of impressionism.
Diaz de la Peña, Narcisse–Virgile (French, 1807-1876)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: Barbizon (France): TGN: 7008938
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
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