Barbizon PDF

In the forest of Fontainebleau near Paris the first artists’ colony came into being. From the 1830’s on, Barbizon attracted artists who were rebelling against the rules of the academy and longed for a ‘good and simple’ life, such as the Naturalists Théodore Rousseau, Constant Troyon and the Realists Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot. They worked in the open air, sketching landscapes, woodlands and scenes of village life, but most of their painting was done in their studios. They were the forerunners of Impressionism.

About 1850 foreign artists began to visit Barbizon, in particular from the Anglo-Saxion countries, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The idea of a land-based artistic community quickly spread through Europe leading to a new era in European art.

Artists of the Artists' Colony