At the beginning of the 19th century, Barbizon was only a small rural hamlet and did not
constitute a parish.
The village developed with the arrival of painters, attracted by the landscapes of the region, who settled there from 1822, residing at the Ganne inn at 92 Grande Rue.
The real boom of this “Barbizon school” took place around the middle of the 19th century,
with the arrivals of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, among others.
Consecrated in 1889, the Saint-Paul chapel was built in the former barn of the painter Théodore Rousseau’s studio, with the installation of a barrel ceiling, a small belfry with a very curious overhanging roof, and a beautiful canopy on wooden posts.
Despite its short history, it has undergone two successive expansions, each time doubling
its surface area towards the rear of the land and changing its original orientation :
in 1920, the rear wall was pierced with two large arches and a concrete bay was added.
The Saint-Paul chapel is decorated with a painting of Our Lady of Fatima,
a gift from Baroness de Rasky.