Eugene Cuvelier was an important early photographer who worked in the northern French town of Arras and then in the region of Barbizon and the forest of Fontainebleau. His style was influenced by his Barbizon painter friends, including Camille Corot and Theodore Rousseau, and his work reveals the rich dialogue between French painting and photography in this period. His images express, in theme and variation, the moods of the rural landscape. This monumental view of a barn and clump of trees evokes the moody, forlorn atmosphere of the estate of the Chateau de Courances, which was located about ten miles from Fontainebleau and had been abandoned for some thirty years.

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