DIAZ DE LA PEÑA, Narcisse Virgile

French landscape painter of the Barbizon SchoolGLOSSARYA group of naturalist landscape painters who worked in the vicinity of Barbizon, a village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleu, southeast of Paris, in the 1840s and 1850s. Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867) was the founder of the group. Other members of the group were Jean-Baptist Corot (French, 1796-1875), Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (French, 1807-1876), Constant Troyon (French, 1810-1865), Jules Dupré (French, 1811-1889), Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), and Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878). Their approach constituted an art movement which eventually led to both Realism and Impressionism. Daubigny was the first of the plein air painters.. He was born of Spanish parents in Bordeaux. His earlier works were Romantic compositions in the manner of Delacroix, but later he became a painter of the forest. He spent much time at Barbizon and although he is the least exalted of the half-dozen great artists who are usually grouped round that name, he sometimes produced works of the highest quality.

At the age of ten Diaz became orphan, and misfortune dogged his earlier years. His foot was bitten by reptile in Meudon wood, near Sèvres, where he had been taken to live with some friends of his mother. The bite was badly dressed, and ultimately it cost him his leg. Afterwards his wooden stump became famous. About 1831 Diaz encountered Theodore Rousseau, four years his junior. At Fontainebleau, Diaz found Rousseau painting his wonderful forest pictures, and determined to paint in the same way.

Diaz exhibited many pictures at the Paris SalonGLOSSARYIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français., and was decorated in 1851. During the Franco-German War he went to Brussels. After 1871 he became fashionable, his works gradually rose in the estimation of collectors.