Maison de Diaz de la Peña

Historical context

Narcisse Virgilio Diaz de la Pena was born in Bordeaux in 1807 to Spanish parents who had fled the Peninsular War. He lost a leg to a snakebite as a child, and taught himself to paint. By the 1830s he was in Paris, working in the Sevres porcelain factories and discovering the forest of Fontainebleau on long walks that his wooden leg made arduous and necessary. He first came to Barbizon in 1836, introduced by Rousseau, and the two became inseparable companions. Diaz settled permanently at the corner of the Grande Rue and the Route de Macherin -- the building that today houses Le Relais de Barbizon restaurant. It was one of the most visible addresses in the village, and Diaz was one of its most visible inhabitants: loud, generous, fond of argument, surrounded by students who paid him in paintings and goodwill. Unlike the reclusive Rousseau or the austere Millet, Diaz enjoyed the social life of the village and the cafes of Paris equally. His paintings divide into two kinds: forest interiors, dense with light filtered through oak canopies, and figure paintings of nymphs and orientalist fantasies that sit oddly alongside his plein-air work but sold extremely well. The forest interiors are the ones that matter -- they show a colourist of extraordinary sensitivity, working with a palette of greens and golds that no photograph has ever quite replicated. Two of his mosaics on the Parcours des Peintres -- numbers 9 and 10 -- are mounted on the facade of this very house.

Historical research: grappilles.fr — Barbizon Histoire et Patrimoine