Barbizon is a village located about sixty kilometers South of Paris overlooking the large Forest of Fontainebleau. Between 1830 and 1870 it was the place of choice for a group of French realist landscape painters, such as Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and others, who gave life to the so-called Barbizon School. And it is precisely to Théodore Rousseau, who made nature and landscape his main motive for artistic research, to whom the Petit Palais dedicates a major exhibition. Rousseau was a naturalist "constantly striving towards the ideal" who played a fundamental role in the affirmation of a new French school of landscape in the mid-nineteenth century, paving the way for the impressionist art that followed. Romantic and realistic, Rousseau aspires to capture the harmony of the world and nature which becomes a mirror of his soul. In his works Rousseau blurs the boundaries between painting and drawing, between sketch and finished work. He experiments, adds material, tirelessly retouches his canvases, to give life to his forests. To make them alive and real, almost tangible.
