Pénélope Barbier is a painter who works in oil and natural pigments on canvas, treating the seasons as states of feeling rather than as scenes to describe. Her work moves through cycles of the natural world in named series — Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers (sunsets and riders), Automnes et fantômes (autumns and ghosts), Printemps et fleurs (spring and flowers) — holding light, movement, memory and the quiet intelligence of landscape. The paintings available through Art of NOMA are unique originals made in 2025, ranging from USD $1,000 to USD $2,300.
Seasons Painted as States of Feeling
Barbier does not paint a place so much as the condition of being inside one. A sunset stands in for passage, an autumn for what lingers after movement has stopped, a spring for renewal registered as rhythm rather than event. The titles are French and the logic is cyclical: each series returns to the same natural world and asks a different emotional question of it.
That cyclical structure is worth pausing on, because it is what separates her work from landscape painting in the conventional sense. A landscape painter records a view. Barbier uses the seasons as a set of recurring conditions — arrival, decay, stillness, charge — and paints the same terrain repeatedly until the feeling, rather than the scenery, becomes the subject. It is closer to how a composer returns to a key than to how a topographer records a hill. The same structural logic — meaning built through repetition rather than a single image — is explored in why series and diptychs work beautifully at home.
Automnes et fantômes 1 opens the Autumns and Ghosts sequence at 100 × 75 cm (39.4 × 29.5 in), USD $1,900, and sets out the series' concern with memory and trace. Automnes et fantômes 2 and Automnes et fantômes 3 continue it at 100 × 85 cm (39.4 × 33.5 in), each USD $1,900, widening the field so the atmosphere has room to settle. Seen together, the three read as one thought developed across three canvases — which is also why collectors who buy one Barbier often come back for its neighbour.
What Series Does Pénélope Barbier Paint?
Four bodies of work carry her practice. Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers puts a rider and a horizon into the same frame, both implied rather than spelled out. Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 3 and Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 4 are both 100 × 80 cm (39.4 × 31.5 in) at USD $1,900, and Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 5 is 100 × 75 cm (39.4 × 29.5 in), also USD $1,900. The two canvases that open the series are the most accessible entry points in her catalogue: Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 1 at USD $1,600 and Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 2 at USD $1,000.
Printemps et fleurs takes emergence as its subject without ever painting a literal flower. All three canvases — Printemps et fleurs 1, Printemps et fleurs 2 and Printemps et fleurs 3 — measure 100 × 85 cm (39.4 × 33.5 in) and are USD $2,100 each. Hivers et éclairs works the opposite temperature, setting stillness against sudden charge: Hivers et éclairs 1 is 100 × 75 cm (39.4 × 29.5 in) at USD $1,900, and Hivers et éclairs 2 is 100 × 85 cm (39.4 × 33.5 in) at USD $2,100.
Two singular works sit slightly apart. Hérons, 100 × 85 cm (39.4 × 33.5 in), USD $2,100, is the most explicit statement of the patience and alert calm she finds in the natural world. À Travers Le Verre 1, 60 × 50 cm (23.6 × 19.7 in), USD $1,900, turns instead to perception itself — a view held at a slight remove, softened by whatever stands between the eye and the subject.
Oil, Natural Pigments and a Slow Surface
Every available painting is made the same way: oil and natural pigments on canvas. The pigments matter more than that phrase suggests. They introduce an organic irregularity you can read in the surface — small shifts of tone and grain that stop the light from settling flat — and they tie the image to elemental process, to erosion and growth and the passage of time the paintings keep circling back to.
Barbier builds in layers, gradually, so a horizon arrives through the material rather than being drawn onto it. This has a consequence most photographs cannot convey: the work rewards distance and proximity differently. From across a room, Feuilles et Traces 1 at 130 × 100 cm (51.2 × 39.4 in), USD $2,300, reads as a field of atmosphere; up close it resolves into marks and residues. Natural pigment also behaves differently under changing light than synthetic colour does — mineral-based tones shift more visibly between morning and evening, in the same way explored in how light changes a painting throughout the day — which means a Barbier canvas is not a fixed image on a wall so much as a surface that keeps adjusting to the room.
Each painting is unique, ships mounted on a professional wooden frame, and arrives with a certificate of authenticity.
Where Her Work Sits in the Art of NOMA Catalogue
Barbier's approach becomes clearer alongside other painters in the gallery who work through material rather than description. A Landscape of Interrupted Dreams 01 by Genoveva Kelleher — oil on canvas, 2025, 130 × 110 cm (51.2 × 43.3 in), USD $2,500 — also reads as landscape while describing interior weather, though Kelleher gets there through rupture and effacement where Barbier gets there through accumulation. Her Synergetic Atmosphere pushes the same instinct further.
Navigate into the Deep 1 by Raúl Cerrillo — oil on canvas, 2022, 109 × 75 cm (42.9 × 29.5 in), USD $2,000 — offers a useful counterpoint on weave and texture: Cerrillo is known for coarse jute surfaces, and this canvas deliberately tightens the weave so depth registers through tone instead. Barbier does the reverse, roughening tone through pigment on an otherwise conventional surface.
And Recolectar y cocinar con la Abuela by Nuria Oliva — oil on cotton canvas, 2024, 90 × 97 cm (35.4 × 38.2 in), USD $2,041 — shares Barbier's interest in memory as something loosened at the edges, but locates it in domestic ritual rather than in weather. Collectors building around atmosphere rather than subject tend to find these three names sit together well.
Scale, Price and Buying an Original
The available canvases cluster at a substantial but not overwhelming scale. Most sit between 100 × 75 cm and 100 × 85 cm, large enough to anchor a wall on their own. À Travers Le Verre 1 at 60 × 50 cm is the most intimate option; Feuilles et Traces 1 at 130 × 100 cm is the largest and, at USD $2,300, the highest priced.
Prices run from USD $1,000 to USD $2,300 and are published on every work, so nothing depends on an enquiry or a private list. That transparency matters more than it sounds. A great deal of the friction in buying contemporary art comes from price opacity — the request-for-price convention that forces a buyer to declare interest before learning what a thing costs. Published prices remove the negotiation anxiety and let the decision stay where it belongs, on the work.
A few of the Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers canvases are painted on demand, individually executed by the artist over roughly three to four weeks after purchase — the product page for each work states whether that applies. Because the series are cyclical rather than sequential, there is no obligation to start at the beginning: buying Automnes et fantômes 2 without 1 costs you nothing in coherence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Pénélope Barbier?
Pénélope Barbier is a contemporary painter who works in oil and natural pigments on canvas. She paints the seasons as states of feeling, organising her work into cycles — Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers, Automnes et fantômes, Printemps et fleurs, Hivers et éclairs — that treat the natural world as a way of holding light, movement, memory and transition. Her work is represented online by Art of NOMA.
What medium does Pénélope Barbier use?
She paints in oil combined with natural pigments on canvas. The natural pigments give each surface an organic variation in tone and texture, and the oil is layered slowly so the image emerges from the material. Every available painting is unique, dated 2025, ships mounted on a professional wooden frame and includes a certificate of authenticity.
How much does a Pénélope Barbier painting cost?
Available paintings by Pénélope Barbier at Art of NOMA are priced from USD $1,000 to USD $2,300. Couchers de Soleil et Cavaliers 2 is the most accessible at USD $1,000; works at 100 × 75 cm and 100 × 80 cm are USD $1,900, works at 100 × 85 cm are USD $2,100, and the largest available canvas, Feuilles et Traces 1 at 130 × 100 cm, is USD $2,300. Prices are listed publicly on every product page.
How large are Pénélope Barbier's paintings?
The available works range from 60 × 50 cm (23.6 × 19.7 in) for À Travers Le Verre 1 up to 130 × 100 cm (51.2 × 39.4 in) for Feuilles et Traces 1. Most of the seasonal canvases measure either 100 × 75 cm, 100 × 80 cm or 100 × 85 cm. Exact dimensions in both centimetres and inches are listed on each work's page.
Where can I buy Pénélope Barbier's work?
Original paintings by Pénélope Barbier are available directly from Art of NOMA, an online gallery with no physical space. Each work is sold as a unique original with its price published on the page, so you can see availability, dimensions and cost before you get in touch.
Browse every available painting in the Pénélope Barbier collection, see how her canvases sit alongside the rest of the gallery's original paintings, or meet the other artists represented by Art of NOMA. The gallery operates entirely online — there is no physical space to visit — and every work carries a published price, so what you see is what a piece actually costs. If a particular canvas is the one, the fastest route is simply to open its page and get in touch from there.