Antoine Chintreuil was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 landscape

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

 painter.

He was born in Pont-de-Vaux

Pont-de-Vaux

Pont-de-Vaux is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.-Population:-References:*...

, Ain

Ain

Ain is a department named after the Ain River on the eastern edge of France. Being part of the region Rhône-Alpes and bordered by the rivers Saône and Rhône, the department of Ain enjoys a privileged geographic situation...

 and grew up in Bresse

Bresse

Bresse is a former French province. It is located in the regions of Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne, and Franche-Comté of eastern France. The geographical term Bresse has two meanings: Bresse bourguignonne , which is situated in the east of the department of Saône-et-Loire, and Bresse, which is located...

. In 1838 he moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where he began studying under Paul Delaroche in 1842. The following year he met Corot

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...

, who influenced him profoundly by encouraging him to paint landscape en plein air

En plein air

En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism...

.

Art historian Athena S. E. Leoussi suggests that Chintreuil's work can be divided into three periods: From c. 1846–1850 he painted Paris and its surroundings, particularly Montmartre

Montmartre

Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...

; from 1850–1857 he lived in Igny

Igny

Igny may refer to one of the following communes in France:* Igny, Essonne, in the Essonne department* Igny, Haute-Saône, in the Haute-Saône department* Igny-Comblizy, in the Marne department...

 and frequently painted in Barbizon

Barbizon

Barbizon is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest.-Art history:The Barbizon school of painters is named after the village; Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, leaders of the school, made their homes and died in the...

, and from 1857 on he lived and worked in La Tournelle-Septeuil in the Seine

Seine

The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...

 valley. During this final period his work reached its fullest development, and he achieved critical recognition.

In the breadth and simplicity of his execution, and in his attention to capturing light and atmosphere, Chintreuil can be placed alongside Eugène Boudin

Eugène Boudin

Eugène Boudin was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors.Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores...

, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and the painters of the Barbizon school

Barbizon school

The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards 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...

, as an important forerunner of Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

.

He died in Septeuil

Septeuil

Septeuil is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France.-See also:*Communes of the Yvelines department . it's an historic commune with an old church from the XIIe century-References:*...

, Seine-et-Oise

Seine-et-Oise

Seine-et-Oise was a département of France encompassing the western, northern, and southern parts of the metropolitan area of Paris. Its préfecture was Versailles and its official number was 78. Seine-et-Oise was abolished in 1968....

in 1873.