Barbizon School in the context of Narcisse Virgilio Díaz

Trees and Undergrowth is the subject of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in Paris, Saint-Rémy and Auvers, from 1887 through 1890. Van Gogh made several paintings of undergrowth, a genre of painting known as sous-bois that was brought into prominence by artists of the Barbizon School and the early Impressionists. The works from this series successfully use shades of color and light in the forest or garden interior paintings. Van Gogh selected one of his Saint-Rémy paintings, Ivy (F609) for the Brussels Les XX exhibition in 1890.

Johann Carl Bodmer (11 February 1809 – 30 October 1893) 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 was well known in Germany for his watercolours, drawings, and aquatints of cities and landscapes of the Rhine, Mosel, and Lahn rivers. After he moved to France following his return from an expedition in the American West, he became a member of the Barbizon School, a French landscape painting group from the mid-19th century. He created many oil paintings with animal and landscape motifs, wood engravings, drawings, and book illustrations. For his work, Bodmer was made a Knight in the French Legion of Honour in 1877.

Eugène Henri Alexandre Chigot (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn ɑ̃ʁi alɛksɑ̃dʁ ʃiɡo]; 22 November 1860 – 14 July 1923) was a post impressionist French painter. A pupil of his father, the military painter Alphonse Chigot, in 1881 he entered the internationally renowned École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was exposed to the ideas of the realist movement of the Barbizon School and to Impressionism. He settled in Étaples in the Pas-de-Calais in an artists’ colony, later returning to Paris where he became a founder of the Salon d’Automne. An official military painter he painted a series of canvases in Calais and Nieuwpoort recording the destruction caused by the First World War. Chigot's reputation was built on his maritime and landscape paintings that arose from his affinity to Flanders and the Pas-de-Calais. He recorded the lives of the people of Flanders placing them within a landscape of soft opalescent light. Later his paintings show traces of expressionism and a more vibrant pallette. He was also a skilled nocturne painter who travelled extensively within France, Italy and Spain.

Charles-Émile Jacque (23 May 1813 – 7 May 1894) was a French painter of Pastoralism and engraver who was, with Jean-François Millet, part of the Barbizon School. He first learned to engrave maps when he spent seven years in the French Army.

François-Louis Français (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa lwi fʁɑ̃sɛ]; 1814–1897), usually known as Louis Français, was a French painter, lithographer and illustrator who became one of the most commercially successful landscape painters of the 19th century. A former pupil of Gigoux, he began his career by studying lithography and wood engraving, becoming a prolific illustrator and printmaker. His work as an illustrator is to be found in around forty books and numerous magazines from the late 1830s to the 1860s. Français also produced a large number of pen and ink drawings, enhanced by sepia, notable for their attention to detail and for their technical adroitness and conciseness.

Français is associated with the Barbizon School of painting, a movement to represent art in nature in a Romantic, Realist context. In 1836 whilst at Barbizon he met the landscape painter Camille Corot and began a ten-year association as a friend and acolyte. Français's paintings possess some of the prominent features of the work of Corot in his use of tonal colours, loose brushwork and an emphasis on softness of form.Français exhibited first at the Paris Salon in 1837 and regularly thereafter until his death in 1897. He lived from 1846 to 1849 in Italy, where he experimented with a brighter palette.His work developed neo-classical sentiments with mythical creatures appearing within a realist landscape. Whilst this bought him commercial success it alienated some critics who were harsh in their judgement of his work. A well respected and decorated artist within France, he was also internationally well known during his lifetime exhibiting abroad in Geneva and London but following his death in 1897, his reputation declined and there are relatively few of his paintings on show in public galleries beyond France.