Barbizon painters at Franklin Bowles

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A couple of days ago I went with a few friends to see the Barbizon show at Franklin Bowles Gallery, 765 Beach Street in SF (it's across from Aquatic Park.) This gallery commissions a mural, at the front of the gallery, for the opening of each major show and one of our party, David Steinhardt, paints most of them. The mural for this show was a very loose, brushy piece inspired by Elisabetta Marchioni's "Roses, Tulipes et Oeillets dans une Urne." Which is not technically a Barbizon painting, but it made a great entry mural.


The Barbizon school was centered around the little French village of Barbizon, near the Fontainebleau Forest, which isn't too far from Paris. In 1824 the Salon de Paris exhibited works of the British artist, John Constable. His landscapes inspired a new generation of French artists to get out of the studio and paint directly in nature, focusing on natural light and natural forms. They were rejected by the salon painters and the academies, of course. So they hung together near a country inn with Corot as their unofficial leader and became the foundation for the next big art movement: Impressionsm.



We were lucky to have Dr. Jean Audigier, art professor at USF and VP of the gallery, as our guide to the show. He gave us an overview of the movement, then took us around the gallery telling us fascinating stories about each painting and artist.


David Steinhardt wrote this about the tour: "I enjoyed learning about a school of painters I knew almost nothing about; from their origin in a contest to leave the studio and paint a tree from life, at a time when there were no trees in Paris; to Corot, authenticating copies of his work done by students so that they could earn some money; to Diaz, coming across Renoir on the cattle track to the woods, noting that he had few supplies, and opening an account for him at the local art store; the story of the Barbizon painters, outraged that the town council had paid to have non-native pines planted, going out and ripping up the seedlings; Monet, at a moment of personal triumph, pointing to Corot's work and saying, 'he was the real painter'; Monet paying the lumberjacks not to cut down the poplars until he had finished painting them; and Jean's many other stories."


Before he left us, Dr. Audigier gave us a tour of the (locked) rooms "for special guests" which included some really exciting artworks including a roomful of Rembrandt etchings. (I was in heaven.)


The gallery has an incredible charcoal drawing by Auguste Allonge. Dr Audigier said that the Allongé had written a guide for artists on charcoal drawing so I checked into it- Google has a free e-pub version of the book, which I downloaded for study.

Franklin Bowles Gallery
765 Beach Street, SF, CASan Francisco, CA 94109
Gallery Hours: daily 10am-10pm
The gallery is located right across from the maritime park, near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco.


-- Posted From My iPad

Comments

Anonymous said…
"no trees in Paris"? Is not the Bois de Bologne part of Paris?
9:29 PM
Anna L. Conti said…
There were no public parks, gardens or street plantings prior to Napoleon, who started them. Apparently the only trees in the city were behind private walls, not available to mere artists. The contest required submission of a painting of a documented real, live tree. The artists had to leave town to find one. And even then they were being cut down almost faster than they could paint them.
9:52 PM
John W. Wall said…
Sorry we missed that tour, but we did have a look around. I'd have been interested to learn why cows figured so prominently in the big landscapes. Was it because they were seen as beautiful? A sign of wealth? Just because they were there? I thought it was interesting how our ideas of what constitutes a "natural" landscape have changed.
9:19 AM
Anna L. Conti said…
I'm not sure, but my guess is that cows were considered natural, beautiful, and a sign of wealth. Apparently there was a pretty good living to be made from painting portraits of "famous" cows.
7:30 PM
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