The Barbizon School and the Origins of Impressionism - Hardcover

Adams, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714829196 ISBN 13: 9780714829197

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 1994

Synopsis

The key painters associated with the Barbizon School - Corot, Millet, Rousseau and Courbet - are among the finest landscape artists of the nineteenth century. From their base at the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau, just outside Paris, they painted nature as they saw it, anticipating many of the techniques and effects of Impressionism. In this survey Steven Adams re-evaluates French landscape painting in the half-century before Impressionism, placing this 'return to nature' against the background of the rapid industrialization and political crises of the period.

About this title

Review:

'Every library and anyone interested in mid-nineteenth-century French cultural life should get it.' (Observer)

'A superb investigation of a long-overshadowed subject. Recommended for all collections.' (Library Journal)

Synopsis:

The Barbizon School were a group of mid-19th-century landscape painters, based in the village of Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau just outside Paris. They were very popular in Europe and the USA a century ago. Many of the features which have come to be associated with Impressionism are also found in Barbizon painting: painting the fleeting effects of the everyday world; painting from life in the open air; and impulsive brushwork. The author examines landscape painting in the 50 years before the term "Impressioniste" was first heard in Paris. The work of the Barbizon painters, such as Corot, Daumier, Millet and Courbet, is set against the tumultuous political crises that overcame France during the first half of the 19th century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0714829196
• ISBN 13: 9780714829197
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240