THE HAGUE.- Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has one of the Netherlands’ largest collections of 19th-century graphic art, including many prints by the most important representatives of the Barbizon School: Theodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Jean-Baptiste Corot and Jean-François Daubigny. A selection of 45 prints of the finest landscapes and a small number of portraits will be shown in the museum’s Berlage Room.

In the mid-19th century a group of young artists settled in the French village of Barbizon, close to the forest of Fontainebleau, just outside Paris. There, taking a fresh look at the world, they painted the simple rural life, free of all academic convention. Their practice of painting ‘en plein air’, in the open air, enhanced the realism of their work.

In the years that followed the Barbizon School became an important role model for artists from all over Europe. The quiet village of Barbizon turned into an international artists’ colony, where artists from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Belgium and even the United States went to paint the landscape as Rousseau and Millet had done. The painters of the Hague School and German artist Max Liebermann also regarded the Barbizon School as an important source of inspiration. Liebermann, whose work will be on display at the Gemeentemuseum at the same time, in a major retrospective, was for example a big fan of Millet.

Etching and lithography
The realism, or naturalism, of the Barbizon School was popular not just because of the paintings. Artists like Rousseau and Millet were among the first to embrace graphic techniques such as etching and lithography, making clever use of these new techniques to reproduce their drawings and paintings. The wide distribution of these prints allowed artists from around the world to discover the realism of this small group of artists in the village of Barbizon. After a time, graphic techniques evolved from a medium for reproducing paintings into an independent art form. Painters like Daubigny deliberately explored the graphic potential of printing, experimenting with devices such as compositional tension and strong light and shade contrasts.