Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña was a French landscape painter that belonged to the Barbizon School. His paintings, like those of his friend and mentor Théodore Rousseau, often depicted the Forest of Fontainebleau near the town of Barbizon. Employing stark contrasts and textured brushstrokes, the artist’s scenes of dark tree lined paths evoke the mysterious quality of being alone in the woods. Born on August 20, 1807 in Bordeaux, France to Spanish parents, his youth was plagued by difficulty, orphaned at 10 years old, he lost his leg due to an infected reptile bite he sustained during adolescence. Pulling himself out of poverty, Diaz worked as a porcelain painter in Sèvres, before focusing on his career as an artist. By 1870, he had gained widespread admiration from both critics and collectors, as well as younger artists like Pierre-August Renoir who venerated Diaz. The artist died on November 18, 1876, in Menton, France. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the National Gallery in London.