Johann Carl Bodmer was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator, and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in literature and paintings, his name was recorded as Johann Karl Bodmer and Jean-Charles Bodmer, respectively. After 1843, likely as a result of the birth of his son Charles-Henry Barbizon, he began to sign his works K Bodmer.
Bodmer depicted in a Woodburytype portrait in 1877
Fort Pierre on the Missouri an aquatint from Maximilian, Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America (1843-1844)
Scalp Dance of the Minitarres
View of Bethlehem, an 1832 aquatint of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania by Bodmer
The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement toward Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name from the village of Barbizon, France, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where many of the artists gathered. Most of their works were landscape painting, but several of them also painted landscapes with farmworkers, and genre scenes of village life. Some of the most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, color, loose brushwork, and softness of form.
Corot, Road by the Water, c. 1865–70, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute
Charles-François Daubigny, The Pond at Gylieu, 1853
Théodore Rousseau, Becquigny, Somme, c. 1857
The Gleaners. Jean-François Millet. 1857. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.