June

The Barbizon “school” was a group of nineteenth-century French painters who worked in a village of the same name near the Fontainebleau forest on the outskirts of Paris. This French style of painting, characterized by a sunlit palette of greens and browns, brushy application of paint, and pastoral depiction of nature, was later championed in the United States by American artists who had spent time painting in rural villages outside Paris.

The Barbizon artists are often regarded as precursors of the Impressionists. Indeed, this progression is evident in a comparison of Julien Alden Weir’s A French Homestead with his later Willimantic Thread Factory (also on view in this gallery). George Inness, however, was less interested in the optics of light associated with Impressionism. Rather than pursuing the sunlit palette of June, Inness’s mature work used the Barbizon style to create dark, foggy vistas infused with spirituality, such as Homeward (at right).