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The mid-19th century saw a movement in Europe toward naturalism in art – or, seen from the opposite perspective, away from the stultifyingly civilized and the sentimentally melodramatic styles then in vogue. The French Barbizon school, not only in its stated philosophy but even in its choice of location, typifies that movement.
The school’s name derives from the village of Barbizon, 30 miles southeast of Paris, on the edge of the forest (rather than the sculpted gardens of the park) of Fontainebleau. Théodore Rousseau settled there in 1846; and Jean-François Millet, soon after, in 1849. Before long a community of like-minded artists had been formed – some of the landscape and animal painters living there, others only visiting. They based their art on 17th-century Dutch landscape artists as well as on some English contemporaries (Constable especially); and though they, like the Romantics, sought solace in nature, they avoided the Romantics’ tendencies to the picturesque. And all of them emphasized the simple and ordinary.
Those of the group, in addition to the founders, who were to become most notable were Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Charles Dupré, Charles Jaque and Constant Troyon – all of whom are represented in the Elizabeth Holmes Fisher collection. Each had his own style and specific interests, but together they established landscape as a legitimate genre in France and became, in working directly from nature, forerunners of Impressionism.
1. Charles Emil Jacque,
The Return to the Fold,
OIL ON CANVAS, 32 x 25 1/2 IN.
Charles Emil Jacque (1813-1894) – like his Barbizon fellow, Millet – suffered due to his choice of subject, only more in the current estimate than in his own time. Livestock is just not fashionable now. A fine realist whose work was influenced by 17th-century Dutch landscape painters, Jacque showed his first painting at the Salon of 1848 and received medals in 1861 and 1864. He lived for a period at Barbizon and was friends with Rousseau, Millet and Diaz. His solid paintings reflect their influence, but they reflect his interests as well – besides working as an illustrator in London and Paris, he also practiced animal husbandry and wrote a book about poultry – and these obscure his achievements as an artist.
2. Jean Charles Cazin, Normandy Village,
OIL ON CANVAS, 18-1/4x22 IN.
This painting is a paysage intime, typical of the Barbizon school in its direct approach to a simple and commonplace subject – without Romantic melodrama or Neoclassical polish.
3. Jean-François Millet, Femme Etandant Son Linge (Hanging out the Laundry),
PASTEL AND CRAYON ON PAPER, 12-1/4x17-1/4 IN.
The only major artist of the Barbizon group not interested in pure landscape, Jean-François Millet (1814-75) is known for his empathic depictions of peasants. This small sketch – a study published here for the first time – cannot have the power of The Gleaners, a large canvas of the poorest of the poor that he is probably most famous for, but it has the “true humanity full of great poetry” Millet strove to achieve. Peasants engaged in ordinary activity are portrayed with dignity and without trivializing detail. There is a solemnity and calm in the picture usually reserved by other artists for religious or royal subjects.
The son of a Normandy peasant, Millet spent his early years working on the land. He went to Paris on a civic scholarship, studying with the history painter P. Delaroche from 1837 to 1839, and afterwards scraped together a living by painting portraits and gallant, Rococo scenes. It was not until he arrived in Barbizon that he found the style and thematic concerns that would become his life-long passions as well as the most likely reasons he lacked lifetime success.
Writer Jules Champfleury, commenting on the 1855 exhibit of his friend Gustave Courbet, who also painted the ordinary and the poor, provides an explanation: “One does not care to admit that a stone-breaker is worth as much as a prince. The aristocracy is appalled to find so many yards of canvas dedicated to such common people.” But where Courbet embraced, Millet denied any explicitly political motives. “I want to paint people,” he wrote, “so that the spectator can see which class they belong to and that it has nothing to do with the idea of wanting to be anything else.”
Deny as he might, however, he remained suspect, his work earning him epithets: “socialist,” “revolutionary.” He received a prize in the 1867 Paris World Exhibition, but only after his death – at an auction in 1889 – did a work of his fetch the then-fantastic sum of 553,000 francs.
ONE WOMAN'S WORK: ELIZABETH HOLMES FISHER'S CULTURAL PATRONAGE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CIVIC IDENTITY will be on view from Jan. 12 through Feb. 26, 1999, in Fisher Gallery, located at 823 Exposition Blvd., between Figueroa St. and Vermont Ave. Gallery hours are 12 noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday during the run of the exhibition. Admission is free; parking on the USC campus is available for $6 through Gate 1 on Exposition Boulevard, just east of Vermont.
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