WINTERTHUR, DELAWARE.- /PRNewswire/A new exhibition at Winterthur Museum and Country Estate traces the roots of Impressionism back to an earlier group of painters known as the Barbizon School, named for the rural French village of Barbizon, in and around which they worked. The exhibition features forty-one lush landscape paintings - depicting everything from expansive countrysides to peasants working in the fields to bustling towns - by such French and American luminaries as Claude Monet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Alfred Sisley, Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent.

On view from September 10, 2005 to January 15, 2006, Paths to Impressionism: French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum explores the evolving styles of the Barbizon and Impressionist movements, the artists' changing attitudes towards nature and the influence both movements had on American painters, collectors, dealers and critics. Many of the Barbizon paintings are on view for the first time in decades. Others are newly conserved and framed.

"We are very excited to present this important collection of French and American paintings at Winterthur," said Anne Verplanck, curator of prints and painting at Winterthur. "These are beautiful paintings in their own right that also show the interrelationship between Barbizon and Impressionism - two critical movements in the history of art - and between French and American artists and American art patrons in the late 1800s and early 1900s."

The Barbizon school of painting provided the stylistic, technical and thematic inspiration for Impressionism. Barbizon artists sketched scenes out of doors (en plein air), carefully observing nature, recording the effects of light and often romanticizing rural life. Starting in about 1850, young American artists begin to embrace Barbizon themes and techniques, traveling to France to study and later returning home to share what they learned with fellow American artists and collectors.

In the late 1800s, Impressionist artists were shifting their views and attitudes towards nature, turning to everyday scenes - busy streets, sun-dappled harbors, rural gardens and urban parks - for subject matter, while moving away from the idyllic or romantic landscape settings favored by
Barbizon painters.

As the 19th century drew to a close, American artists who had worked and studied with the Impressionists in France returned to their homeland to actively promote the works, themes and techniques of French Impressionism to painters and patrons in America.

"The Worcester Museum's collection contains excellent examples of landscape paintings by leading masters of the Barbizon and Impressionist movements," said Elizabeth Johns, PhD, professor emerita of the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania and guest curator for Paths to Impressionism. Dr. Johns is also the author of the exhibition's catalogue.

"The paintings in the collection - and in this exhibition - provide a window into the time," said Johns. "They help us understand how people in France and America viewed landscapes and nature during the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, a time when people on both continents were concerned about deforestation and the affects of industrialization on the natural world."

In America, the fascination with landscapes, painted and real, was part of a broad national and international trend. At Winterthur, the influence is visible in the landscape laid out at the turn of the century by the estate's owner Henry Algernon du Pont and, later, his son Henry Francis.

Winterthur Museum and Country Estate - known worldwide for its preeminent collection of 85,000 American antiques; a glorious garden and natural landscape; and a library that is a research center for the study of American art and material culture - offers a variety of tours, exhibitions, programs and activities throughout the year. USA Today recently named Winterthur as one of America's "10 great places of historic proportions."