Other towns with artistic pedigrees

As soon as the rail line from Paris reached Fontainebleau in 1849, the forest became a popular destination for day-trippers. But artists such as Theodore Rousseau soon found reason to lament their arrival; they were accompanied by litter, crowds and souvenir shops.

Fortunately, the forest is now part of the Gatinais National Park, and the village of Barbizon is a carefully tended French treasure. But other villages around the woods have retained their rural charm too, despite their popularity.

For visitors who avoid weekends and school holidays, a driving tour through some of these hamlets is the occupation of a fine, lazy day in the French countryside, with discoveries along the way.

Chailly-en-Biere, a few miles north of Barbizon, is where Barbizon painters went to church, following a well-trod path through the fields between the two villages (now separated by the N37 highway). Rousseau (1812-67) and Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75), who each lived in Barbizon, were buried in the quiet, walled cemetery on the edge of Chailly. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, a frequent visitor, died in 1875 and was buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

All three members of this great Barbizon triumvirate were painting in the area when a new generation of artists began brushing shoulders with them around 1860. Soon to be labeled Impressionists, Frederic Bazille, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and, especially, Claude Monet, learned to love the forest. Monet often sojourned in Chailly and painted the path that led from the village into the woods, most notably in his gigantic, unfinished “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe,” begun around 1865, an artistic response to Edouard Manet’s famous “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” completed two years earlier.

Courances, a sleepy stone village west of Barbizon, is home to one of the loveliest gardens in France, at the 17th century Chateau de Courances (open holidays and weekday afternoons April 4 to Nov. 1).

Nearby Millet-la-Foret is a market center known since the Middle Ages for the cultivation of medicinal and aromatic herbs, displayed at the National Plant Conservatory on the southeast edge of town.

French surrealist writer Jean Cocteau lived in Millet and was buried in its little 12th century Chapel of Saint-Blaise des Simples. Before his death in 1963 he helped restore the church and took up a paintbrush to cover its walls with images of medicinal plants, cats and Christ’s resurrection.

Another surprise in Millet-la-Foret lurks in the forest on the north side of town: the Cyclops, a 75-foot, one-eyed monster sculpted out of metal, mirror, glass and recycled junk (including a railway boxcar) by modern artists Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. It has a viewing platform near the top (open Saturday afternoons from May to October).

Grez-sur-Loing on the south side of Fontainebleau Forest sits quietly by the River Loing, a tributary of the Seine. Near the ruins of its medieval tower, built on what was then the frontier between France and Burgundy, a 13th century bridge still takes traffic across the river as kayakers funnel through its arches.

The old Hotel Chevillon on the banks of the Loing became an artists’ colony around 1875, when Barbizon was deemed too touristy, and attracted foreigners such as Swedish painter Carl Larsson, playwright August Strindberg, Swiss artist Karl Bodmer and American Thomas Moran, who went on to make his fame painting Yellowstone.

Grez was memorably described in “Forest Notes,” an essay by a young Robert Louis Stevenson, who visited several times in the 1870s. “Women wash and wash all day among the fish and water lilies. It seems as if the linen washed there should be specially cool and sweet,” he wrote.

The hotel is now an artists’ retreat run by a Swedish foundation.

Moret-sur-Loing, about 5 miles downriver from Grez, is a distinguished walled and gated medieval town that hosts a market on Tuesday mornings. Its Notre-Dame church, castle keep, bridges and riverbanks were often painted by Sisley, who lived there with his family -- in poverty because his work was overlooked by the art world -- from 1889 to his death in 1899.

The Loing empties into the Seine a few miles north of Moret, near the village of Samois-sur-Seine. Houseboats line this bucolic section of the great river and a footbridge provides access to the Ile du Berceau, the setting for the Django Reinhardt Festival, which takes place June 25 to 28 this year.

Gypsy jazz guitarist Reinhardt, who often teamed with violinist Stephane Grappelli, retired in Samois. His house in the lower town bears a plaque, and his grave is in the town cemetery.