Fontainebleau Forest

In the Forest of Fontainebleau
Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
March 2 – June 8, 2008

En Plein Air

Claude Monet's Fontainebleau Forest
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Fontainebleau Forest, 1865
Artist: Claude Monet (French 1840 - 1926)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: Kunstmuseum Winterthur,
Presented by the Galerieverein,
Friends of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 1934
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Claude Monet, impressionist genius, is often associated with the rise of artists painting outside, using natural light as a resource as it played upon their landscapes.

Title: The Old Oak in the Forest of Fontainebleau, c. 1830
Artist: Jules Coignet (French 1798 - 1860)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Private Collection: Courtesy of Brame and Lorenceau, Paris
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

It was in the Forests of Fontainebleau where artists like Monet first began to popularize this practice. Fontainebleau is located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Paris.

Claude Monet's Bazille and Camille (Study for Déjeuner sur l'herbe)
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Bazille and Camille (Study for "Déjeuner sur l'herbe"), 1865
Artist: Claude Monet (French 1840 - 1926)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Well before the formation of the Impressionists, in the 1830s, a group of like minded artists worked separately near the city of Barbizon. They took the name the Barbizon school and included Jean-François Millet, Theodore Rousseau, Narcisse Diaz, Jean-Baptist Corot and Charles Francois Daubigny.

Frederic Bazille's Landscape at Chailly
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Landscape at Chailly, 1865
Artist: Frédéric Bazille (French 1841 - 1870)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Fontainebleau was a popular tourist attraction as well as a site for upcoming artists to capture the enchanting landscape. Landscape photography as an art movement had begun and as the scenes drew Monet's eye they also attracted photographers such as Gustave Le Gray and Eugène Cuvelier who explored similar themes as the painters.

Théodore Claude Félix Caruelle d'Aligny

Theodore Claude Felix Caruelle d'Aligny's Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Rocks in the Forest of Fontainebleau, c. 1845
Artist: Théodore Claude Félix Caruelle d'Aligny (French 1798 - 1871)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: Musée Départmental de l'Oise, Beauvai
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Corot was a strong influence on and friend of Théodore Claude Félix Caruelle d'Aligny. First in 1828 Fontainbleau Forests drew his attention making him among the earliest of the artists to paint in the Barbizon area of France.

Augustin Enfantin

Augustin Enfantin's An Artist Painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: An Artist Painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau, c. 1825
Artist: Augustin Enfantin (French 1793 - 1827)
Medium: Oil on Paper Mounted on Canvas
Private Collection
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

During his brief life Augustin Enfantin made a mark on the Parisian Salon of 1827 who accepted several of his Italian landscapes. Unfortunately that was the year of the artist's death cutting short a career that held great promise. He was a friend and contemporary of Corot.

Charles Émile Jacque

Charles Émile Jacque's Shepherdess and Sheep
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Shepherdess and Sheep, c. 1870
Artist: Charles Émile Jacque (French 1813 - 1894)
Medium: Oil on Wood
Permanent Collection: The City of Fontainebleau
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Charles Émile Jacque was at first known as an engraver. This is the genre in which he first trained, learning the art of dry point, as he was apprenticed to a engraver of maps. In the mid 1840s he focused more and more on his painting talents; drawn to the landscapes at Barbizon. Among his friends that joined him was Jean-François Millet. Jacque's preferred subjects were country centered, such as a shepherdess tending to her flock.

Alfred Sisley

Exclusively a landscape painter, Sisley has the unfortunate distinction of being the only major Impressionist artist who did not achieve financial success during his life time.

Alfred Sisley's Rural Guardsman in the Fontainebleau Forest
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Rural Guardsman in the Fontainebleau Forest, 1870
Artist: Alfred Sisley (French 1839 - 1899)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Permanent Collection: Mr. and Mrs. Marsh Gibson
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

He studied with Charles Gleyre at the School of Fine Arts. Among Gleyre's other students were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In 1864 Sisley left the school opting to paint in Fontainebleau first at Chailly-en-Bière and the following year in Marlotte.

Alexandre Desgoffe

Alexandre Desgoffe's The Oaks of Fontainebleau
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: The Oaks of Fontainebleau, c. 1850
Artist: Alexandre Desgoffe (French 1805 - 1882)
Medium: Oil on Paper Mounted on Canvas
Private Collection, New York
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Alexandre Desgoffe studied under the great Ingres. Desgoffe enjoyed the countryside of both France and Italy and was known for his preference for en plein air painting.

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur's Forest of Fontainebleau: Spring in the Woods
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Forest of Fontainebleau: Spring in the Woods, 1860-1865
Artist: Rosa Bonheur (French 1822 - 1899)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Private Collection
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

Rosa Bonheur was one of a handful of French female sculptors of her time. She lived in Fontainebleau and was primarily known as a French painter of animals.

Jules Hereau's Monsieur Lafontaine Visits Barbizon, September 1859
from In the Forest of Fontainebleau Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
Title: Monsieur Lafontaine Visits Barbizon, September 1859
Artist: Jules Hereau (French 1839 - 1879)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Private Collection: Courtesy of Douwes Fine Art (since 1805), Amsterdam
Image Courtesy: National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery's exhibit honoring the achievements inspired by Fontainbleau Forest includes over one hundred paintings, pastels, and photographs made in the forest of Fontainbleau dating from the mid-1820s through the 1870s.

In the Forest of Fontainebleau
Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet
National Gallery of Art:
March 2 – June 8, 2008
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:
July 13 - October 19, 2008

National Gallery of Art

www.nga.gov