Natural scenes now become the subjects of…

Natural scenes now become the subjects of their paintings rather than mere backdrops to dramatic events.

The Salon de Paris of 1824 had exhibited works by John Constable, whose rural scenes have influenced some of the younger artists, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature.

Barbizon, a village bordering the Fontainebleau forest, about thirty miles (fifty kilometers) south of Paris, is to become the center of this new movement towards realism in painting, which has arisen in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement.

Known as the Barbizon school, the movement’s adherents, primarily landscape painters—Théodore Rousseau and Narcisse Virgilio Diaz are early members—usually paint outdoors in restrained hues, and often at twilight, to evoke the look and mood of their native countryside.

Most of the Barbizon painters finish their original sketches in the atelier.