Village of Barbizon

The village of Barbizon, a short drive from Fontainebleau, was home to a colony of landscape painters in the 1830s and 1840s who came to paint directly from nature in the forest. Corot, Millet, Rousseau, and Daubigny all worked here, developing the plein-air tradition that directly influenced the Impressionists.

The Auberge Ganne, the inn where the painters stayed and sketched on the walls, is now a museum dedicated to the Barbizon school. Millet's studio is also preserved. The village is small and somewhat tourist-oriented, but the setting — at the edge of the forest, with a long main street of stone houses — retains its character. Worth combining with a forest walk.

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A story
Jean-François Millet lived and worked in Barbizon for 27 years, painting peasant subjects — The Gleaners, The Angelus — that made him one of the most reproduced artists of the 19th century. He was so poor that he sometimes accepted a chicken in exchange for a painting. The Angelus alone sold for the equivalent of millions at auction in 1889.

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