BARBIZON SCHOOL and the Nature of Landscape

THE BARBIZON SCHOOL and the nature of landscape May 2 to July 21, 2008 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum THE BARBIZON SCHOOL and The nature of landscapE RACHEL KEITH stately tree, its scalloped outline silhouetted against a cerulean sky, grows A 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 Jean- Baptiste-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 vil- lage 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. THE BARBIZON SCHOOL The retreat to a preindustrialized, ways….”2 Thoré’s clear distinction unspoiled state of nature appealed not between an “eternally fecund” nature Fig. 1 (opposite) Jules Dupré only to the painters of the Barbizon and the artificiality that defines modern FRENCH, 1811-1889 school, but was also immensely popular life, however, in reality was never so The River among the urban bourgeoisie who clearly delineated, and the “pristine” c. 1850 Oil on canvas bought their paintings. Artists and quality of the Barbizon area was largely 3 21 3/16 x 17 7/8 in. patrons alike turned to nature—engag- fictionalized, initially by entrepre- ing it directly or through images—as neurial locals in an effort to stimulate an antidote to the ills of modern indus- economic development through tour- trialization. By the early nineteenth ism. For a nineteenth-century audience century, the city of Paris was in the desperate for an escape from urban midst of transforming into a modern life, the rural scenes painted by the art- metropolis that seemed increasingly ists of the Barbizon school seemed to far removed from traditional and rural promise a much-desired glimpse of the ways of life. The modernization of elusive natura naturans. Paris, including industrialization and Haussmannization,1 resulted in what Such escapist desires created a brisk many perceived as a dirty, crowded, market not only for landscape paint- and artificial environment—the ings and prints, but for all things opposite of natura naturans, or “natural nature-related, which seemed to offer nature,” a medieval ideal revived dur- a temporary respite from modern life. ing this period by, among others, the Gardens, parks, and diorama shows art critic Théophile Thoré, a good were accessible without leaving the city, friend and supporter of many of the while a burgeoning tourist industry Barbizon painters. catering to those audiences with the means to leave the metropolis boosted the quantity and variety of travel Artists And pAtrons Alike guides, inns, and country houses avail- able in all price ranges. Souvenirs such turned to nAture— as the genévrine, a carved bit of juniper, engAging it directly allowed tourists to bring the scent of the forest to their homes in the city. or through imAges— The travel industry became just one of many industries exploiting nature for As An Antidote to the ills of commercial development; although its means were very different from those modern industriAlizAtion. of the forest clearing and rock quarry- ing operations that seemed to pop up In a review of the Salon of 1847, everywhere as the city’s demand for Thoré praised a painting by Diaz de natural resources grew, the end goal— la Peña, stating, “We all have quite profit—was nevertheless the same. As enough worries in our political and pri- landscapists as well as participants in vate lives to forgive the arts for remind- the travel industry, the Barbizon artists ing us of natural nature, natura naturans were both entrenched in and conflicted as the ancients called it, that nature about this commodification and com- eternally fecund and luxuriant which mercialization of nature. This essay will contrasts so cruelly with our artificial examine the ambiguous relationship and THE NATuRE of LANdSCApE 4 between the Barbizon artists’ genuine (Fig. 2) offers a vibrant example of desire to produce naturalistic, plein-air such poetic light explorations. Similar depictions of rural life and their role in effects could imbue a painting with a the commodification and commercial- strong emotional quality, as in Jacque’s ization of nature through the perpetua- Landscape with Sheep (n.d.) (Fig. 3), where tion of the myth of natura naturans. the clouded gray sky and heavy shad- ows create a sense of melancholy or loss lthough the members of the that seems to reflect the emotional state A Barbizon school shared no set of the pensive shepherdess seated amidst doctrine or credo, and their styles her sheep. varied significantly, they were united in their common desire to experience Through their poetic depictions of nature directly and to present it indi- nature, the Barbizon painters rejected vidualistically and poetically, employing the traditional artistic conventions of painterly techniques that emphasized Academic landscape painting, such as the subjectivity of the artist through the pastoral and the heroic, and strived effects of light and atmosphere.3 The instead to depict a less idealized, more complex interplay of lights and darks personal version of a humble nature.4 against the intensity of the azure sky in Dupré’s The River (Fig. 1) exemplifies Diaz de la Peña’s Wood Interior (1867) this strategy. Pink and mauve patches THE BARBIZON SCHOOL Fig. 2 (opposite) Narcisse Virgile hinting at a sunrise peek out from painters such as J. M. W. Turner Diaz de la Peña between the horizon and the lower and John Constable (both featured FRENCH, 1808-1876 branches of the tree, but Dupré’s stra- prominently in the 1824 Exposition Wood Interior tegic placement of the tree intentionally Universelle).6 Dupré’s The River shows a 1867 Oil on canvas blocks the most stunning effects of the strong influence of the French Rococo, 43 1/4 x 51 1/2 in. sunrise. Instead, the hints of color play particularly in the frilly edges of the tree 5 a supporting role for the tree, which tra- and the chiaroscuro effects of its dark Fig. 3 (below) ditionally was too mundane a subject to leaves silhouetted against the bright Charles Emile Jacque merit being anything but a study: choos- sky. Dupré—along with many other FRENCH, 1813-1894 ing a commonplace tree over spectacu- Barbizon artists, including Diaz de la Landscape lar sunrise was a conscious departure Peña and Constant Troyon—began his with Sheep from such Academic conventions. For career as a porcelain painter, where n.d. Barbizon artists, the role of the painting typical landscape scenes remained Oil on canvas 29 1/8 x 39 5/8 in. was not to inspire awe for the breath- rooted in a conservative tradition. As taking beauty of nature, as prescribed keenly aware as they were of the styles by the theory of “the contemplative of landscapes that were in popular sublime,” but to engage the viewer in demand at the time, they—wittingly the quotidian serenity of nature.5 or not—likely drew on this knowledge while painting their own landscapes. At Though the artists of the Barbizon the same time, by embracing local and school professed to look only to nature northern sources stylistically and as sub- as source and inspiration, stylistic influ- ject matter, the artists of the Barbizon ences from several artistic sources are school largely rejected the classicizing still evident in their work, including the tendencies of the Academic landscape French Rococo, seventeenth-century genre, in which the Italian countryside Dutch landscapes and genre scenes, and figured prominently and local scenery the more recent landscapes of English was virtually ignored.7 Instead, the anti- and THE NATuRE of LANdSCApE classical Barbizon artists focused almost studio to create large, highly finished exclusively on local French scenery.8 Salon paintings. The artists of the Barbizon school, like most of their Perhaps the most fundamental aspect peers, followed his advice: they painted of Barbizon practice—important to the studies and sketches outdoors, then typ- 6 artists as well as to their patrons—was ically returned to their studios to create working en plein air. Not only did it final compositions using their studies. provide an opportunity to observe Their finished paintings, however, often light effects directly, but it appeared to retained the unfinished appearance of promise an unmediated engagement their studies—as in Corot’s Le chemin with nature that would ensure the des Vieux, Luzancy, Seine-et-Marne (1871- artistic independence of their vision. 72) (Fig. 4) and Harpignies’s Landscape: To viewers also, a painting executed Briare (1888) (Fig. 5), with their large en plein air—without the semblance of patches of color and visible brush- studio mediation—would have seemed strokes—creating the impression that to bring them one step closer to nature.

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