Artist in the Gorge aux Loups, Forest of Fontainebleau

The Forest of Fontainebleau and the nearby village of Barbizon were key destinations for French landscape painters from the 1820s through the 1870s. These artists, known today as the Barbizon School, embraced the rich topography of their native countryside while rejecting time-honored idealizing conventions. Fontainebleau, with its rugged terrain and towering trees, became a veritable studio for the landscape painter, depicted here by Cicéri with walking stick in hand and rolled canvases strapped to his rucksack, presumably filled with sketching supplies to sustain a day’s work.