Narcisse Diaz, a French landscape and figure painter and founding member of the avant-garde Barbizon school, was born in Bordeaux of Spanish parents. His parents were refugees from Joseph Bonaparte's Spain. By the age of ten, he was a penniless orphan in the care of a priest at Bellevue near Paris.(1). The young Narcisse, who had lost one of his legs to blood poisoning, was apprenticed as a pottery decorator in Paris at the age of 15, (2) which may account for his later predilection for bright colors and his rather free draftsmanship.(3)

His handicap, and its impact on his mobility, were to be determinant in the course of his future career. As was a common practice, Narcisse learned to paint at the Louvre, whe...