Magnificent Oil On Canvas - Landscape - Barbizon School - XIXth Century

Magnificent oil on canvas, anonymous, very beautiful hand, made in the prestigious school of Barbizon.

We can see a mother and her child walking on a path bordered by long and tall bare trees with cut branches, hurrying to their home under a gray and cloudy sky presaging rain.
The frame is from the Louis Philippe period and completely restored with gold leaf.

Period: XIXth
Measures: H: 87 x W: 74.5cm

It was in Barbizon, a small village located on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, that in the XIXth century an essentially new art in France would flourish: The landscape.

Some of the most important characteristics of the Barbizon school of painters are its tonal qualities, color, loose brush, and smoothness of form.

The Barbizon style retains a realistic style, but with a slightly romantic intonation, characterized by their almost exclusive specialization in landscape and their direct study of nature.
This will influence the rest of 19th century French painting, especially Impressionism.

Artists will usually take their notes outside to complete their final work in their studies. They gave up the picturesque image of country life and began to analyze nature and its portrayal with a critical eye.

This observation of the natural produces sentimental effects on the painter's soul, so that his landscapes acquire a rather sensitive dramatic quality.

Instead of the images with historical, religious or mythological themes required by the classical canon, the representatives of the Barbizon school painted landscapes of various formats.

The hallmark of the school was the shift towards a realistic depiction of nature in contrast to the classical composition of the idealistic landscape.

This new vision of the intimate landscape, which already led to Impressionism, has become the hallmark of the group of artists united.

It was the painters of Barbizon, however, resolutely turned towards nature and reality, who definitively freed the landscape from paralyzing academic conventions and gave it an unprecedented impetus in French art.