Under the title "In the Forest of Fontainebleau : Painters and Photographers from Corot to Manet", the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. will be hosting between 2 March - June 8 2008 an exhibition dedicated to this special place in France, which became a landmark in the history of European art. The curators have chosen around 120 paintings, pastels and photographs, presenting how the forest of Fontainbleau became the center for the developement of the 19th century landscape painting.
This location became a gathering place for French artists in the 1830s, when the first painters came here, interested in the natural beauty of Fontainebelau, Little did they know that eventually will become a major part of art history, as the pace where the famous Barbizon School formed and developped. In no more than two decades, by the middle of the 19th century, this space was a university for young artists, who came here tu study landscape painting, finding their sources of inspiration in the wonderful places. Over the next years the forest of Fontainebleau also became a model for several European national parks, as the first natural reserve.
The artists came here, working in nature - in a manner that was at first regarded with disdain, then imitated all over the world - and capturing on canvas what they saw. Likewise, the first photographers found a continuos source of inspiration in Fontainebleau, and masters of this art, such as Eugene Cuvelier or Gustave Le Gray succeded in creating brilliant works of photography, forever capturing the charm of the region.
For the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, the organisers have selected both paintings and photographs, ranging from the works of Baptiste-Camille Corot or Jean-Francois Millet (who was one of the best members of the Barbizon School) to those of Claude Monet, who was inspired in his Impressionist style but the atmosphere he discovered in Fontainebleau.
June 2007
