Corot's landscapes developed from the classical landscape tradition and strongly influenced the young Impressionists. He trained in his native Paris, having persuaded his parents that his future was with painting rather than the family textile business. In 1825 he travelled to Italy and made many drawings and oil sketches in the open air in and around Rome. These are remarkable for their naturalism and sensitivity to tone as well as colour. His finished paintings were carefully worked up in the studio. From the 1850s he developed a softer style, using grey-green tones which proved very popular with nineteenth-century collectors in France and Britain.
The Barbizon School were an informal group of artists who were active between about 1830-1870. They would gather to paint in the forest of Fontainebleau near the village of Barbizon, a name which later historians used to refer to them.
A movement in art, literature and music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that rejected neoclassical restraint in favour of emotion and individual expression.
A group of Dutch, realist painters working in The Hague in the second half of the nineteenth century, painting in subdued colours to convey the atmosphere and impression of moment in their works. Members included Anton Mauve, Johannes Bosboom, Joseph Israels, Jacob Maris, and his brothers Matthijs and Willem.