Youth and Training
Born in 1819, in Greville-Hague, Normandy, his parents were peasant farmers. He was educated under the local priests, but showed such a talent for drawing he was sent to Cherbourg in 1833 to study with the portrait painter Paul Dumouchel. By 1835 he was studying full time with Lucien-Théophile Langlois. In 1837 he received a stipend to move to Paris where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the French academic painter Paul Delaroche. His early works showed strong influences of Nicolas Poussin and consisted mainly of portraits and mythological subjects.
Barbizon School of Landscape Painting
However by the late 1840s his subject matter changed, and like his peers Gustave Courbet and Honore Daumier, he started to paint peasants going about their everyday normal life. The Winnower (now lost) was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848 and was one of the first rural scenes he painted based on his childhood memories. In 1849 a cholera epidemic broke out in Paris, and on the advice of engraver Charles-Emile Jacque, he moved to Barbizon, near the Fontainebleau Forest, where he was to remain the rest of his life. It was here, that his painting had a huge influence on the Barbizon School. The school was moving towards outdoor realism, or naturalism, choosing to paint from nature directly - a method known as plein air painting - and abandoning the formality of classical painting.