Forest of Fontainebleau, Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Link is to zoomable image on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; Original is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Corot entered this painting in the Paris Salon of 1846, and it became the first officially recognized pure landscape in French painting — without historical or mythological subject or other noble human activity as was traditionally required.
Corot based this studio work on location studies in the forest of Fontainebleau, where he had been painting for some 20 years.
His work there paved the way for the plein air paintungs of the Barbizon school, and later, Monet and the other Impressionists.
