Wood Interior

Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña

1867

On View in Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 2

Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña was a leading figure of the French Barbizon school, a group of artists who painted around the Forest of Fontainebleau and the village of Barbizon outside of Paris from the early 1830s to the 1870s. These artists broke with academic conventions of composing paintings from sketches made in the studio, and instead painted en plein air (out of doors). They sought to depict nature on a more human, accessible scale, and as an antidote to the increasing industrialization of urban life. In this wooded scene, Diaz de la Peña intertwined branches and leaves at the top of the canvas and cast the ground below in deep shadow, creating an area of darkness that frames a clearing illuminated by sunlight and a blue sky. This contrast evokes a sensation of walking through the cool interior of a forest and emerging into brilliant light, an effect enhanced by thick brushstrokes and varied paint application that mimic the dense forest foliage. The sensual, painterly exploration of the landscape expresses a subjective and intimate vision of nature, implying an unmediated and authentic connection with the natural world. [Permanent collection label, 2017]

Artist Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (French, 1807–1876)
Title Wood Interior
Date 1867
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 43 1/4 x 51 1/2 in.
Credit line Bequest of Charles Parsons, 1905
Object number WU 2110

Technique oil painting
Work type painting
Theme Landscape

Currently on View Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, Room 2

Reframing the 19th Century
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 06/20/2024

Real / Radical / Psychological: The Collection on Display
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/09/2016 - 01/15/2017

Inside the Palace of Fine Arts: Cosmopolitanism at the 1904 World’s Fair
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/09/2014 - 08/03/2014

The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/02/2008 - 07/21/2008

Collecting Patterns
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/05/2003 - 12/07/2003

Beginnings: The Taste of the Founders
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/21/2000 - 03/19/2000

Art in the Age of Revolution
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/02/1997 - 10/12/1997

Corot to Monet: the Rise of Landscape Painting in France, 1830–1870
IBM Gallery of Science and Art, 07/30/1991 - 09/28/1991
Currier Museum of Art, 01/27/1991 - 04/29/1991
High Museum of Art, 01/28/1992 - 03/29/1992
Dallas Museum of Art, 11/03/1991 - 01/05/1992

Nineteenth Century Art from the Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/19/1986 - 04/01/1986

Life and Land in Nineteenth Century Europe
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 11/06/1983 - 04/22/1984

Parsons Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1983 - 08/21/1983

Nature and the Figure
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/09/1983 - 03/06/1983

Landscape Traditions in the 19th Century
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/11/1983 - 10/30/1983

The Centennial Exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/15/1981 - 10/11/1981

Other than Monet
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/01/1978 - 10/05/1978

Charles Parsons: Portrait of a St. Louis Collector
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 12/12/1976 - 01/30/1977

Salon de Resserre: Selections of European and American Art of the Nineteenth Century from the Washington University Collections
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 02/01/1970 - 03/06/1970

Barbizon Revisited
The Cleveland Museum of Art, 01/15/1963 - 02/24/1963
Toledo Museum of Art, 11/20/1962 - 12/27/1962
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 09/27/1962 - 11/04/1962
Barbizon Revisited [verify], Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 03/14/1963 - 04/28/1963

Art at Washington University
Saint Louis Art Museum, 05/07/1953 - 05/31/1953

Summer Loan Exhibition: Paintings of the Barbizon School
Saint Louis Art Museum, 07/02/1916

“The Home Exhibition”: A Collection of Paintings Owned in St. Louis
Saint Louis Art Museum, 06/25/1911 - 10/31/1911

Advancing St. Louis, In and Through Art
Saint Louis Art Museum, 01/01/1907 - 01/01/1907

Louisiana Purchase Exposition, United States, Loan Collection, Group 13
Palace of Fine Arts, Central Building (St. Louis, Missouri), 04/30/1904 - 12/01/1904

The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape 2008

1905
Charles Parsons

Inscription [LR of canvas, in black paint:] N. Diaz .67.

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