In the Forest of Fontainebleau - from Corot to Monet

A superb montage putting together a camera (as it was in the 19th century) and an easel opens the way to an exhibition hosted by the National Gallery of Art in DC. It is about the Barbizon School: the French artists - painters and photographers - who came to the forest of Fontainebleau to discover there the virtues of plain-air and to set the ground for Impressionism. And so each oak in the forest became a fascinating character in the works of these artists: the scenery for the glorious march of art history from Corot to Monet, from Realism to Impressionism.

The exhibition has more than hundred works: paintings by Corot, Theodore Rousseau, Diaz de la Pena, Sisley, Millet, Monet, among others, photographs mainly by Gustave le Gray and Eugene Cuvelier.

You can see here some images from the exhibition. A more complete set of images is here; and some thumbnails.

I came today the second time to visit the exhibition, as I wanted to see once more a painting created by an artist who is perhaps less known, Charles-Emile Jacque: the departure of a flock on a road bathed by a generous sun.

Charles-Emile Jacque - Sheep Leaving a Farmyard
(Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Jean-Francois Millet is very well represented in the exhibition. Let me choose for you this Sheepfold under moonlight.

Jean-Francois Millet - The Sheepfold, Moonlight
(Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

Here are some more images:

• Gustave le Gray
• Oacks of Fontainebleau: Le Rageur, painted by Corot
• Oaks of Fontainebleau: The Bodmer Oak
• Eugène Cuvelier - Farm, Barbizon
• Charles-Emile Jacque
• A Study for Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
• Jules Héreau
• Rosa Bonheur
• Augustin Enfantin
• Renoir - Mother's Anthony's Inn at Marlotte
• Renoir: Patineurs au Bois de Boulogne
• Auguste Giraudon's Artist - Peasant
• The Photographs of Constant Alexandre Famin

(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)

(The Moderns)