Michel, Georges (1765–1843)

French painter. A landscapist who worked out-of-doors, he was a solitary forerunner of the Barbizon School. In a style influenced by Dutch landscape artists, he painted sensitive views of Montmartre (then still a village, now a part of Paris), as in Aux environs de Montmartre (Louvre, Paris).

Michel initially assimilated something of the outlook of the Dutch landscape masters through restoring and cleaning their pictures. Content with his immediate surroundings, and never exhibiting, he painted in obscurity and without appreciation.