In the Woods

Imitator of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña · c. 1860

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

32.7 × 42.5 cm (12 7/8 × 16 3/4 in.); Framed: 66.1 × 73.7 × 12.7 cm (26 × 29 × 5 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

Dappled forest light filters through a canopy of loosely rendered foliage in this intimate woodland scene, painted in the manner of one of the Barbizon school's most lyrical voices. Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña spent decades painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau, developing a signature approach built on warm, jewel-like colour laid down with fluid, almost improvisational brushwork. Works attributed to his imitators share that same sensibility — the forest not as a topographical record but as an atmosphere, a mood rendered in shifting greens and golden underglow. This particular canvas, held at the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to around 1860, carries the hallmarks of his circle: soft depth, naturalistic light, and a genuine feeling of standing inside the trees rather than looking at them from a distance. Diaz himself was largely self-taught, famously learning to paint by copying works in the Louvre before finding his voice entirely outdoors — a trajectory that gave Barbizon forest painting much of its unguarded, instinctive quality. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the same dimensions as the original, using traditional pigments on canvas, and preserves the textural warmth and tonal subtlety that make this quiet woodland scene so enduring.