Barbizon School

French school of landscape painters of the mid-19th century, based at Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau. They aimed to paint fresh, realistic scenes, sketching and painting their subjects in the open air. Members included Jean François Millet, Théodore Rousseau, and Charles Daubigny.

Friendship and poverty brought the Barbizon painters together and first prompted their ‘return to nature’. They were not, however, merely romantic exiles from the city but realistic students of landscape, and in this respect were the forerunners of the Impressionists. Daubigny, in his practice of plein-air painting, approached nearest to Impressionism. By the middle of the 19th century the village, through the prestige of its original settlers, had become a much-patronized resort of artists.