Maison de Diaz de la Peña

Díaz de la Peña arrived in Barbizon in 1837 and never really left. Born in Bordeaux to Spanish political exiles, orphaned at ten, he lost a leg to a snakebite in his youth — the wooden prosthetic becoming, as contemporaries noted, almost as famous as the man himself. He worked first as a porcelain painter at Sèvres before turning to oil, and by the time he settled at no. 28 he was one of the most sought-after painters in France. His collectors queued. His studio, described by visitors as furnished with rare luxury, stood in sharp contrast to the modest houses of Millet and Rousseau nearby. He was a fixture at the Auberge Ganne — generous, voluble, financially supportive of his less commercially fortunate friends. It was in the forest near Barbizon that he encountered the young Renoir being harassed by local youths, drove them off with his cane, and gave him money for paints — an encounter Renoir's son Jean later recorded in his memoir. Díaz died in Menton in 1876. His works hang in the Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, and the Dallas Museum of Art.