Paris Day
Trip : Barbizon
Day-Trip to Barbizon from
Paris - SouthEast to Fontainebleau
On the western edge of the 62.000 acre Fontainebleau forest, the
village of Barbizon retains its time-stained allure despite the
intrusion of art galleries, souvenir shops, and busloads of
tourists. The group of landscape painters known as the Barbizon
School - Camille Corot, Jean-François
Millet, Narcisse Diaz de la Pena, and Theodore rousseau, among others -
lived here from the 1830s on. They paved the way for the Impressionists
by their willingness to accept nature on its own terms rather use
it as an idealized base for carefully structured compositions.
Sealed to one of the famous sandstone rocks in the forest, which
starts, literally, at the far end of the main street, is a bronze
medallion by sculptor Henri Chapu, paying homage to Millet and
Rousseau. Corot and company would often repair to the Auberge Ganne
after painting to brush up on their social life. The inn is now the
Musée de l'Ecole de Barbizon. Here you'll find documents of the
village as it was in the 19th century, as well as a few original works.
The Barbizon artists painted on every available surface, and even now
you can see some originals on the upstairs walls. Two of the ground
floor rooms have been reconstituted as they were in Ganne's time, note
the trompe-l'oeil paintings on the buffet doors. There is also a
video on Barbizon School. Though there are no actual Millet
works, the Atelier Jean-François Millet is cluttered with
photographs and mementos evoking his career. It was here that Millet
painted some of his most renowned pieces, including the Gleaners.