A show highlight is Hanging Rock, painted by George Quincy Thorndike in 1866, of a rock formation in Middletown that was a popular subject among the artists. The Newport Art Museum show of Barbizon-influenced painters has many local scenes.

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NEWPORT Say the word “Impressionism” and most art lovers’ faces will light up faster than a plastic Santa at Christmas. Say the word “Barbizon” and the reaction is more often “Ho-hum” than “Ho, ho, ho!”

That’s a shame for several reasons. Without Barbizon’s example to build on, French Impressionism might well have developed along very different lines — or not at all. Indeed, Impressionist hallmarks such as dappled brushwork and plein-air painting (painting outdoors rather than in a studio) actually originated a decade or two earlier with Barbizon painters such as Camille Corot, Theodore Rousseau and Charles-François Daubigny.

The big difference between Barbizon and Impressionism is color: while Monet & Company liked theirs bold and bright, Barbizon painters typically favored a palette of earthy browns, greens and ochers.

For New Englanders in general — and for Rhode Islanders in particular — the Barbizon movement is important for another reason. During the late 19th century, Barbizon painting took hold here more deeply than it did in any other part of the country. Galleries showed it, collectors bought it and artists embraced many of its esthetic goals and stylistic tenets. The Providence Art Club, founded in 1880, was an early Barbizon hotbed.

Now this long-neglected period is the focus of a terrific exhibit at the Newport Art Museum. Organized by NAM curator Nancy Grinnell, “Barbizon to Impressionism: Rhode Island Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century,” brings together about 40 paintings by some of the top guns of 19th-century Rhode Island art, including John LaFarge, William Morris Hunt, Edward M. Bannister, Sydney Burleigh and Charles Walter Stetson.

Many of these names are already well known in local art circles. Bannister, of course, is one of the most important African-American artists of the 19th century. Though born in Canada, he settled in Providence, where he helped launch the Providence Art Club. Burleigh, meanwhile, designed and built the Fleur de Lys Building, the flamboyant Arts and Crafts landmark on Steeple Street, now owned by the Art Club.

LaFarge and Hunt are even more famous. Part of the “summer colony” artists who toggled between New York and Newport, both were gifted writers and critics as well as painters. It was through them that many of the newfangled ideas about art emanating from mid-19th-century Europe — ideas like plein-air painting and the goal of capturing fleeting effects of light and atmosphere — first made inroads into American art.

If all Grinnell had done was round up a few paintings by these artists, “Barbizon to Impressionism” would still be worth a visit. That’s especially true given the quality of works such as Bannister’s Sabin Point on the Narragansett Shore (1885), a panoramic view of the Bay that rarely leaves its home at Brown University, and Hunt’s Bishop Berkeley’s Rock (1859), a luminous study of the craggy Middletown landmark.

Other works are equally impressive. There’s LaFarge’s Second Beach and Purgatory Rocks, a surprisingly abstract landscape in which everything — rocks, sand, water, sky — is rendered in misty veils of color. Painted in 1865, it could easily be mistaken for one of Mark Rothko’s Color Field paintings from the 1950s.

Another highlight is George Quincy Thorndike’s Hanging Rock, a monumental view of the same rock formation that appears (in much smaller form) Hunt’s Bishop Berkeley’s Rock. Painted in 1866, the work’s large size and panoramic scope owe a lot to Hudson River School painters such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. But the color scheme — a mix of dusky greens, grays and browns — is squarely in the Barbizon camp.

With paintings like these, “Barbizon to Impressionism” should appeal to a wide range of viewers, from casual grazers to serious fans of American art. (The fact that you can identify many of the places that appear in the paintings — a kind of art-world version of Where’s Waldo — doesn’t hurt, either.)

Yet the show’s ambitions don’t stop there. Rather than treating Hunt, Bannister and LaFarge as isolated figures who just happened to stumble on a similar set of artistic styles and precepts, the show attempts to place them in a larger context of like-minded artists, critics, dealers and collectors.

In particular, the show introduces us to the man who served as the Barbizon School’s unofficial ambassador to America. His name is Seth Vose, and if anyone can claim to have paved the way for both Barbizon and Impressionism in the New World, it’s this son of a Massachusetts shoe-maker.

Born in 1831, Seth Morton Vose grew up in Stoughton, Mass., where his father, Joseph Vose, owned a prosperous shoe manufacturing business. In 1841, the elder Vose decided to try his hand at more cultural pursuits by buying the Westminster Art Gallery, an art supply store in downtown Providence.

In 1850, his son Seth assumed day-to-day control of the “gallery,” which sold everything from picture frames to paints and brushes. Over the next few decades, Vose would also show many of the leading figures in contemporary French art, among them Corot, Rousseau, Daubigny. Other names that appear on Vose’s ledgers include Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Richard Parkes Bonnington and John Constable.

In short, a regular visitor to Vose’s Westminster Street gallery would have seen many of the artists that were at the forefront of late 19th-century European art. Not until the early 1920s, when Alfred Steiglitz began introducing Americans to work of European Modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse at his 291 Gallery in New York, would a single gallery owner have such an impact.

In addition to European artists, Vose showed works by some of the top American painters of the day. Many were associated with the Hudson River School, the American-made landscape movement that favored sweeping vistas, blazing sunsets and other dramatic effects — and whose penchant for artistic overstatement contrasted sharply with the quieter, more intimate views favored by Barbizon painters like Millet and Corot.

(A savvy businessman, Vose apparently took an equal-opportunity approach to exhibiting art.)

Though he struggled at first — his opening exhibit of works by Corot was a complete bust; not a single painting sold — Vose persevered, eventually building a small base of collectors who were just as passionate about 19th-century French art as he was. By 1882, there were two Vose galleries — the original in Providence and a second gallery in Boston. (Alas, the gallery’s Providence branch closed in 1910, although the Boston branch, now known as the Vose Galleries of Boston, is still going strong at 238 Newbury St.)

How much were Bannister, Stetson and Hunt and other artists influenced by the exhibits at the Westminster Art Gallery? That’s hard to say, although the fact that original works by Corot, Daubigny and other leading Barbizon painters were readily available at the gallery certainly had some impact.

At the same time, the works on display in “Barbizon to Impressionism” paint a mixed picture, with many artists picking and choosing elements from a variety of sources.

A pair of small Bannister landscapes from the 1880s — the charming Road to a House with a Red Roof and the more conventional Four Cows in Meadow — both have strong Barbizon roots. So does a wonderful charcoal drawing of solitary hiker making his way between snow-covered pines (The Woodsman, 1885). In all three cases, the mood is quiet, intimate and self-contained, with none of the visual shock and awe found in Hudson River School paintings of the same time period.

In short, perfect examples of Barbizon-style restraint.

Yet “restraint” isn’t a word that comes to mind while standing in front of the show’s largest Bannister, the majestic Sabin Point on the Narragansett Shore. A sweeping panorama, in which everything — boats, clouds, trees and even a gaggle of chilly-looking oystermen — seems to be seeking shelter from a blustery sea breeze, it owes as much to Hudson River School bravura as it does to Barbizon cool.

Other paintings display a similar mix of styles and sensibilities. LaFarge’s Lady of Shallot, for example, seems to be channeling the knights-and-ladies themes favored by Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. The modern-looking Second Beach and Purgatory Rocks, meanwhile, has more in common with the moody luminosity of one of James MacNeill Whistler’s famous Nocturnes.

Perhaps the show’s biggest surprise is George Whittaker. Like Bannister, Whittaker was an early member of the Providence Art Club. And like Bannister, Whittaker was an early-adopter of Barbizon-style painting. The handful Whittaker works on display here — including the darkly brooding Forest Interior and the lovely Corot-inspired New England Landscape — show that he learned his lessons well.

As for Impressionism, the show includes relatively few examples of this ever-popular style. Yes, the title says “Barbizon to Impressionism,” but the emphasis is squarely on the older, less flashier style. Sadly, at least some viewers will be put off by this news. For everyone else, I have one word: go.

“Barbizon to Impressionism: Rhode Island Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century” runs through Jan. 27 at the Newport Art Museum, 76 Bellevue Ave. Hours: Mon.-Sat. 10-4 and Sun.noon-4. Admission: adults $6, seniors $5, students and military personnel $4, children 5 and under free. Contact: (401) 848-8200 or www.newpotartmuseum.org.

bvansicl@projo.com