Barbizon School of Painters

Barbizon is a typical French village, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, consisting of a long street, with cottages or farmhouses on either side. In 1848, a revolutionary crisis and the cholera, combined, drove many artists out of Paris, who found refuge at Barbizon. At the end of the street, near the forest, they soon built themselves stone hamlets, which became their permanent residences, hence the name "Barbizon School of Painters." The works of Millet which brought him fame were all painted at Barbizon, where he lived for twenty-seven years, painting the peasants and peasant-life about Barbizon, his own home appearing in many of the pictures, and here he died in 1875. Corot also lived at Barbizon, and died in the same year as Millet.

Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), another artist of the Barbizon school, is said to have emancipated landscape painting as Moses liberated the Hebrews. He led them out of ancient thraldom into the land of Promise, where the trees had leaves and where men and animals were real flesh and blood. At Barbizon, Rousseau was the near neighbor and next friend of Millet for many years.

Narcisse Virgile Diaz is called "the Martyr of Art." In his early youth he lost a limb, from the bite of a poisonous insect, while sketching; and he died from the bite of a snake at Barbizon. He was the pupil of Rousseau, and eminent as a colorist.

Charles Francois Daubigny was also of this famous set of artists. He loved the river Seine, and his name is associated with it forever. He spent much of his time in a house-boat, which he built so that he might live and paint in the presence of his subjects; his pictures bear the impress of his affection for the scenes they represent. He died in 1878.

There is still another artist associated with Barbizon, whose name and works are familiar, Rosa Bonheur, born at Bordeaux, 1822.

Great honors are not reserved for men alone. Mlle. Marie Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) was awarded five medals, and the badge of the Legion of Honor, which was personally delivered to her by the Empress Eugenie, in 1865; the Leopold Cross, 1880; and the Commander's Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella, the Catholic, in 1880.

During the Franco-Prussian War her home at Barbizon, adjoining the Forest of Fontainebleau, was respected by a special order of the Crown Prince of Prussia.

She was the Director of a School of Design for Girls, which she founded, and which is "exempt" from the jury of admission to the yearly Salon by a special decree of 1853. In 1853 she exhibited the "Horse Fair," which first won her fame. It changed owners for immense sums of money, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, presented by Vanderbilt, who paid $53,500 for it at the Stewart sale in 1887.

Hammerton says: "Rosa Bonheur is the most accomplished woman painter that ever lived." And adds: "She is a pure and generous woman as well." She belonged to a family of artists; her father, two brothers and her brother-in-law were all artists. She was famous and eminent as a cattle-painter, and habitually wore male attire.

Rosa Bonheur died at By, her home near Fontainebleau, in the spring of 1899, aged seventy-seven.

But Jean Francois Millet is the most famous and was always the favorite of this school.

A story is current that, while still a student at the Academy of France, he overheard two men talking in front of an art store. One of them said, "That is by a clever young artist named Millet; he paints nude women." Stung by the justness of the remark, he threw up his engagement in Paris and returned to his peasant home, refusing to paint any more. But to the surprise of the Academy, he soon became famous as a painter of homely peasants. One can imagine his thoughts. He seems to say, There must be something higher in art than mere beauty of form. My dear old grandmother--awkward and homely--is far more beautiful in her simple devotion to duty, her uncomplaining, self-sacrificing life, than any beauty of form, without the beauty of spirit to transform it, could make her.

It is to this stage of his art-development that most of his famous pictures belong. As an example, his "Feeding the Ducklings"--a picture of his home at Barbizon, his two children seated in the doorway, his wife sitting in front feeding them bread and milk; and the picture of a father and mother in front of a cottage teaching their first child to walk--homely, heavy figures surrounded by evidences of poverty, yet over all the scene rests a halo of love and contentment.

The great painter made lowly themes almost divine. In his "Angelus" the homely potato-diggers have attained unto spiritual life. We can almost hear the deep tones of the bell in the distant spire as we look at the bowed heads and arrested labor. What matter if the form be homely!--all are one in the Father's love.

Millet marked his art "Sacred to the Dignity of Labor," Breton devoted his art "To the Goddess of Poverty," as she presides over French peasants. Breton never was a peasant, so there is in his art a reflection of sentiment. He paints as Longfellow or Tennyson wrote. His pictures are idyllic poems. They come as a relief from the realism of Millet, who was born and reared a peasant, and knew all about the hard, rugged life. He had been himself "a man with a hoe." Breton sees his French peasants from the studio of a cultivated man of the world. He paints his Poverty Peasants while seated before a cozy fire, waiting for a comfortable dinner. His people of toil are well dressed, the toil represented only by the upturned garment or the upturned sleeves. Some critics favor the merits of Jules Breton beyond any other living French painter. The Germans extol him, and his pictures command fabulous prices.

There are no lines of comparison between Millet and Breton. We see in art just what we bring to it, and no more. If we wish to see the real peasants of Southern France--a race to themselves--we seek Millet; if we would read an ideal poem about French peasants and do not care to see them, we will seek out Breton.