Art - Paris - page 696

While romantics revamped the subject picture, the Barbizon School effected a parallel
transformation of landscape painting. The school derived its name from a village near the
Forêt de Fontainebleau where Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) and Jean-François
Millet (1814-75) painted in the open air. The son of a Norman peasant farmer, Millet took
many of his subjects from peasant life, and his L'Angélus (The Angelus; 1857) is probably
the best-known French painting after the Mona Lisa. View it in the Musée d'Orsay.
In sculpture, the work of Paris-born Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) overcame the conflict
between neoclassicism and romanticism. One of Rodin's most gifted pupils was his lover
Camille Claudel (1864-1943), whose work can be seen with Rodin's in the Musée Rodin.
Trendsetting Galleries
Maison Rouge (Bastille & Eastern Paris)
Palais de Tokyo (Eiffel Tower & Western Paris)
Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain (Montparnasse & Southern Paris)
Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création (Eiffel Tower & Western Paris)
Realism
The realists were all about social comment: Millet anticipated the realist program of
Gustave Courbet (1819-77), a prominent member of the Paris Commune whose paintings
depicted the drudgery and dignity of working-class lives. In 1850 he broke new ground with
A Burial at Ornans (in the Musée d'Orsay), painted on a canvas of monumental size re-
served until then exclusively for historical paintings.
Édouard Manet (1832-83) used realism to depict Parisian middle classes, yet he included
in his pictures numerous references to the Old Masters. His Déjeuner sur l'Herbe and
Olympia were both scandalous, largely because they broke with the traditional treatment of
their subject matter. He was a pivotal figure in the transition from realism to impressionism.
One of the best sculptors of this period was François Rude (1784-1855), creator of the re-
lief on the Arc de Triomphe and several pieces in the Musée d'Orsay. By the mid-19th cen-
tury, memorial statues in public places had replaced sculpted tombs, making such statues all
the rage.
Sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-75) began as a romantic, but his work in Paris -
such as The Dance on the Palais Garnier and his fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg - re-
calls the gaiety and flamboyance of the baroque era.