A New Look at Impressionism: Millet and the Painters of Barbizon 

From Jean-François Millet’s representations of peasant life to the depiction of the solitudes of the forest of Fontainebleau by Théodore Rousseau and others centered in the village of Barbizon, gain insights into a robust current in 19th-century French art. Controversial in France, but avidly collected in America, these independent painters decisively rejected idealism and polish in favor of an earth-bound sincerity of vision on the threshold of Impressionism.
Jonathan Ribner, associate professor; director of Graduate Admissions, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Boston University