Gateway

Tuesday
Bible study this morning in Cely en Biere. We were watching a video address on the Parables, the first in a series we will be watching through Lent. On my way home, I took a slight detour into the village of Barbizon to get a blip. The plaque above this gateway tells us that this was the home of the painter Narcisse Diaz de la Pena. Pena was born in 1808 in Bordeaux to Spanish parents who had fled the Peninsular Wars. He was dogged by misfortune in his younger years, becoming an orphan at an early age, then when he was thirteen, contracted an infection due to an insect sting or snake bite, necessitating the amputation of his left leg. In 1823 he became an apprentice in painting on porcelain at a china factory in Paris, but he soon tired of industrial work and embarked on a course of independent study. From about 1833 he began to explore the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he became a regular summer visitor over the next few years, forming a close association with Theodore Rousseau and the other landscape painters of what came to be known as the School of Barbizon. He died in 1876 at the Mediterranean town of Menton.