Dixon hosts Barbizon art exhibition

Rosa Bonheur's "Ploughing Scene," 1854, is among works in the Dixon Gallery exhibit "Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Paintings from the Walters Art Museum."

Realism vs. romance, with the 1848 European Revolutions as a backdrop: As evidenced by "Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Paintings from the Walters Art Museum," now at the Dixon Gallery, beauty is where you find it.

The Barbizon School -- a loosely knit association of French painters, including Theodore Rosseau, Charles-Francois Daubigny, Jules Dupre and Camille Corot -- turned its back on the City of Light and flourished in bucolic Barbizon, a village south of Paris on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest. Away from the hustle and growing political turmoil of France's capital city, these painters created an aesthetic that would bridge the gap between the Romance period and Impressionism.

Rosa Bonheur's "Ploughing Scene," 1854, is among works in the Dixon Gallery exhibit "Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Paintings from the Walters Art Museum."

The 32 paintings in "Road to Impressionism," from the Baltimore museum, are augmented by a companion exhibition, "In a Barbizon Mood: Paintings from the Dixon's Permanent Collection." Both shows continue through Jan. 11.

These are not stuffy paintings. As seen in Jean-Achille Benouville's "Landscape with Wild Buffalo" (1865), this is France as big-sky country: low-slung, jewel-tone landscapes dappled with incredible light, and topped with a mammoth horizon.

Works like Dupre's "A Bright Day," in which cows graze beneath a copse of trees, and Rousseau's "Banks of the Bouzanne, Berry," emphasize the pastoral theme. Other paintings show details of agrarian life, such as Rosa Bonheur's 1854 work "Ploughing Scene," in which a farmer bends behind his team of cattle, straining to plow a field. In their wake, a flock of tiny birds search for worms in the upturned earth.

Jules Breton's 1871 "Returning From the Fields" features a trio of women with faded kerchiefs and dirt-scuffed toes, a vision that is simultaneously idealized and realistic.

Seascapes also figure into the exhibit, via a pair of paintings by Dupre ("At Sea" and "Sunset on the Coast," both painted in 1870), and Constant Troyon's "Coast Near Villers," an 1859 work that shows men on horseback amid hunters in the grassy dunes of the Atlantic.

The realism of Barbizon paintings -- by Tryon, Dupre and Narcisse Diaz -- gives way to the beginnings of Impressionism, a transition witnessed in works such as Daubigny's "Twilight (The Sea at Andresy)", which depicts a typical Barbizon scene -- another maiden and another cow at the river bank -- albeit this time, with fantastic daubs of paint in the mix. A similar experiment, an untitled landscape by Paul Desire Trouillebert, features magnificently unhinged renderings of birch trees, while Alfred Sisley's "The Terrace of St. Germain, Springtime" presents a more formalized look at Impressionism, in its depictions of barges chugging down the Seine River.

Preview

The Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Paintings from the Walters Art Museum

Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 4339 Park Ave., through Jan. 11.

Dr. Eik Kahng of the Walters Art Museum will talk about the exhibition at 2 p.m. Sunday.

For more information, go to Dixon.org or call 761-5250.

© 2008 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.