Portrait of Three Trees, Barbizon, Ca 1865, Diaz De La Pena Circle French Oil on Panel

An extremely beautiful oil study of three trees, bathed in sunlight. Dating from the 1860s, the work has a timeless quality and is stylistically so close to the work of Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (1807-1876) that it might be possible to attribute the painting to him.

I much enjoyed an essay by Rachel Kemp about an eerily similar work by Diaz de la Pena in the Kemper Art Museum, which puts into context the Barbizon movement, of which Diaz de la Pena was a member. Below is an extract:

"(...) Diaz de la Peña, known in his day as a first-rate colourist and a master of light, harnessed dramatic effects of color and light to simulate the sensations of walking through a dense forest (...) Wood Interior immerses viewers in what many understood to be a depiction of pristine nature, devoid of any sign of either man or modernization. The opportunity for momentary escape provided by such a painting would have been especially enticing to nineteenth-century urban dwellers desperate to connect with a natural world that seemed increasingly removed from their experience of life in the modern city.

The Barbizon school, a loosely associated group of landscapists working between 1830 and 1870, produced paintings of the French countryside that were much beloved, as they offered viewers a brief reprieve from the realities of everyday urban life. At the same time these artists were living out their own escapist desires in the rustic village of Barbizon, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. As a core member of the group, Diaz de la Peña shared its utopian aspirations to experience nature and rural life directly and to depict such scenes poetically through painterly techniques that highlighted the subjective expressions of the artist.

(...) Wood Interior likely depicts the Bas-Bréau, one of the oldest sections of the forest. About thirty miles outside Paris, these expansive woods—full of ancient, craggy oaks, silvery beeches, and a thick undergrowth of shrubbery—were the background for the farming village–cum–artists’ colony of Barbizon. The area’s diverse landforms provided rich source material for the artists’ modest paintings of nature, and its reputation as an unspoiled natural enclave appealed to their desires to commune with nature."

Our portrait of three trees is unsigned and measures 16.5 x 24 cm. The overall framed size is 31.5 x 24 cm.

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