The Barbizon School of painters – that loose collection of sentimental French landscape artists – never had to learn how to paint wildfire. Théodore Rousseau’s depictions of the forest at Fontainebleau were typified by the watery light and hyper-decidious flora. In Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s Forest at Fontainebleau a slow stream curves around creaking oak trees; there is not just grass but flowers and vines too.

Some 30 years later, Claude Monet showed the Barbizon lot how it was really done, and had his own stab at the central French woodland. It’s much better – the underbrush is less verdant, and sun dapples through the branches of an ancient tree. But notable in its absence from all three artists’ efforts is a raging fire wreaking permanent destruction on the landscape. Now, if we were to take any of the men seriously they would need to have spent a long time figuring out how to render hot flame and white ash on the canvas.

Around 5,000 acres of the forest at Fontainebleau, about an hour in the car south of Paris, have burnt down. Hundreds of people have been evacuated. And then in the west of the country a fire in Gironde – near Bordeaux – claimed around 42,000 hectares and over 220,000 had to evacuate. And here it is not just the landscapes of Rousseau and Corot’s........

© The Irish Times