Forest Entry Bas Bréau

Historical context

This is where the village ends and the forest begins. The transition is abrupt -- one moment you are on a road with buildings on either side, the next the surface changes underfoot, the light shifts, and the sounds of the village recede. The painters felt this threshold every morning when they left their studios and walked east. It was the daily border crossing between the world of commerce and conversation and the world of motifs and light. The Bas-Breau sector immediately beyond this point was the most frequented painting ground of the Barbizon School. Rousseau came here for thirty years. The oaks he painted are still standing -- some of them 400 years old, thick enough that two people cannot reach around them. The forest has been a protected site since 1861, when Napoleon III, partly at the urging of the Barbizon painters themselves, created the first nature reserves in French history.

Historical research: grappilles.fr — Barbizon Histoire et Patrimoine