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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Paintings

Diana and Actaeon. Diana Surprised in Her Bath Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Diana and Actaeon. Diana Surprised in Her Bath

Cows in a Marshy Landscape Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Cows in a Marshy Landscape

Little Girl with a Doll Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Little Girl with a Doll

A Wagon in the Plains of Artois Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Wagon in the Plains of Artois

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld

Hagar in the Wilderness Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Hagar in the Wilderness

View in Holland Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

View in Holland

Bacchante in a Landscape Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Bacchante in a Landscape

Solitude. Recollection of Vigen Limousin Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Solitude. Recollection of Vigen Limousin

A Flood Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Flood

Juive d'Alger. L'Italienne Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Juive d'Alger. L'Italienne

A Village Street, Dardagny Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Village Street, Dardagny

House and Factory of Monsieur Henry Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

House and Factory of Monsieur Henry

Dardagny Morning Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Dardagny Morning

The Muse. History Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Muse. History

The Evaux near Chateau-Thierry a Path bordered by Trees Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Evaux near Chateau-Thierry a Path bordered by Trees

Agostina Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Agostina

Avignon from the West Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Avignon from the West

Diana Bathing. The Fountain Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Diana Bathing. The Fountain

The Parc des Lions at Port-Marly Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Parc des Lions at Port-Marly

Young Woman in the Woods Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Young Woman in the Woods

A Morning. The dance of the Nymphs Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Morning. The dance of the Nymphs

Ruins of the Chateau de Pierrefonds Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ruins of the Chateau de Pierrefonds

Young Women of Sparta Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Young Women of Sparta

Ronde D'Amours. Lever du Soleil Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ronde D'Amours. Lever du Soleil

Girl Weaving a Garland Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Girl Weaving a Garland

Mary Magdalene in Prayer Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Mary Magdalene in Prayer

The Curious Little Girl Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Curious Little Girl

Interior of the Church at Mantes Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Interior of the Church at Mantes

Faneuses a Ville D'Avray Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Faneuses a Ville D'Avray

Marietta Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Marietta

Repose Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Repose

The Letter Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Letter

Portrait of a Child Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of a Child

A Woman Gathering Faggots at Ville-d'Avray Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Woman Gathering Faggots at Ville-d'Avray

Morvan. Petit Moulin Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Morvan. Petit Moulin

Marcoussis, Route a Travers les Champs Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Marcoussis, Route a Travers les Champs

Melancholy Italian Woman. Rome Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Melancholy Italian Woman. Rome

A pensive Girl Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A pensive Girl

Paysage Breton Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Paysage Breton

Woman with a Lace Hat Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Woman with a Lace Hat

Forest on the Grace Coast in Honfleur Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Forest on the Grace Coast in Honfleur

Pensive Young Woman Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pensive Young Woman

Portrait of a Young Girl Print by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

Portrait of a Young Girl

The Burning of Sodom Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Burning of Sodom

Aqueduct Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Aqueduct

Edge of Lake Nemi Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Edge of Lake Nemi

Gypsy Girl at a Fountain Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Gypsy Girl at a Fountain

Morning on the Estuary. Ville d Avray Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Morning on the Estuary. Ville d Avray

 Mother and Child on a Beach Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Mother and Child on a Beach

Mother Protecting Her Child Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Mother Protecting Her Child

Pollard Willows Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pollard Willows

Ville d Avray Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ville d Avray

Bacchante by the Sea Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Bacchante by the Sea

Landscape of La Ferte-Milon Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape of La Ferte-Milon

Wall. Cotes-du-Nord Brittany Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Wall. Cotes-du-Nord Brittany

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ville d'Avray

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Burning of Sodom (formerly The Destruction of Sodom )

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Woman with a Pearl

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Evening on the Lake

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape at Arleux-du-Nord

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Monsieur Pivot on Horseback

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Peasants under the Trees at Dawn

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Sketch of a Woman in Bridal Dress

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Souvenir of a Journey to Coubron

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Souvenir of Palluel

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Summer Morning

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Leaning Tree Trunk

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Marsh at Arleux

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Oak in the Valley

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Roman Campagna, with the Claudian Aqueduct

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Seine near Rouen

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Wagon (Souvenir of Saintry)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Wood Gatherer

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Agostina , the Italian

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

View of Villeneuve-les-Avignon

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The artist's studio

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

View from the Boboli Gardens in Florence

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Breton Women at the Well

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Bridge of Narni, Augustus bridge over the Nera

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Castel Gandolfo

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Château de Rosny

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The letter

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Coubron

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Marissel

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Morte Fontaine

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Pierrefonds

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Woman in Blue

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Woman with Mandolin

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Woman with daisies

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Belfry of Douai

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Hagar in the desert

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Hayrides

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Honfleur. Calvary on the Cote de Grace

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Cottages with mill on the bank of the stream

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Interior of the Cathedral of Sens

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Italian woman with pitcher

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Nantes Cathedral

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Nantes Cathedral

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Church of Marissel

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

La Rochelle harbor entrance

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

La Zingara

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape Castel Gandolfo

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Woman Reading

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Reading girl in red shirt

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Girl in the greenery

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Marietta ( The Roman Odalisque )

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of a Mother Superior

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Portrait of Octavie Sennegon

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of Louis Robert as a Child

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of Madame Charmois

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Resting Under the willows by the water

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Rome, Colosseum and Farnese Gardens

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Rome , Forum, and the Farnese Gardens

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Seated woman with breast uncovered

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

St- André-en -Morvan

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

City and Lake Como

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Road to Sin-Le-Noble

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Stormy Weather . Banks of the Pas-de-Calais

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Dance of the Nymphs , detail

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pond Ville d'Avray

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Forest of Fontainebleau ( The Oak )

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Forest at Ville d' Avray input

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Way to Sèvres


Drawings

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Tree landscape on the lake

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The forest of Coubron

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The big birch, memory of Ariccia

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Nude Girl in Landscape

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Monte Soracte

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Nepi , near Rome

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of a child with doll

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Portrait of a girl with beret

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Study from the forest of Compiègne


Illustrations

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Creek under trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Trees in the mountains

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Praying Magdalena

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Dante and Virgil

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The bath

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The bath of the Shepherd

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Feast of Pan

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The grave of Sémiramis

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The young girl and Death

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The meeting in the grove

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The boaters

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The poet and the muse

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Cathedral of Florence

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Lonely Tower

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The garden of Pericles

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The summit of La Belle Forière

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The great lumberjack

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Ambush

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The cart

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The church tower

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Little Shepherd

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Little Shepherd

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Little Shepherd

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Artist in Italy

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The rider in the reeds

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Dreamer

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Dreamer under the big trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The tower on the other side

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Tower of Henri VIII

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The forest of the hermit

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The home of the poet

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Avenue of Painters

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The lonely fortress

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Gardens of Horace

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The children of the farm

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The little sister

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The cool source

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The cow pasture

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The landscape in Genoa

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The reading under the trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The paladins

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The rest of the philosophers

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The banks of the Po

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The watermill

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The gust of wind

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A lake in Tirol

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A family in Terracine

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Antibes

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Bas- Bréau

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Valley of the Sun

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of the Lac Majeur

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The lake of Nemi

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The fortifications of Arras

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Fortifications of Douai

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape at Monaco

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of the Sologne

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memories of Tuscany

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memories of Tuscany

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Villa Pamphili

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Eza

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Fampoux

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Italy

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Italy

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Ostie

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Memory of Salerno

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Five motifs

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Griffonnage

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Big rider under trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Hagar and the Angel

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Shepherd , struggling with his goat

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

In the dunes

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Young mother at the forest edge

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Little rider under trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Kneeling Magdalene

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Cow with guardian

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

La Ronde gauloise

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape with trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape with tower

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape of Italy

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Madame Rosalie

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Orpheus and the beasts

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Orpheus and Eurydice

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Rest on the glade

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Rider on the country

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Riders and pedestrians in the forest

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Rembrandt's lumberjack

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Saltarelle

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Sappho

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Self Portrait of the Artist

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Environments of Rome

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Under Trees

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Venus clipping Cupid's wings

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Venus clipping Cupid's wings

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Hide and seek

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ville d' Avray

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Ville d' Avray

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Visiting card of a cavalier

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

White willows and poplars

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Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld Print by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French: [ʒɑ̃ ba.tist ka.mij kɔ.ʁo]; July 16, 1796[1] – February 22, 1875) was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.


Biography

Early life and training

Camille Corot was born in Paris in 1796, in a house at 125 Rue du Bac, now demolished. His family were bourgeois people—his father was a wigmaker and his mother a milliner—and unlike the experience of some of his artistic colleagues, throughout his life he never felt the want of money, as his parents made good investments and ran their businesses well.[2] After his parents married, they bought the millinery shop where his mother had worked and his father gave up his career as a wigmaker to run the business side of the shop. The store was a famous destination for fashionable Parisians and earned the family an excellent income. Corot was the second of three children born to the family, who lived above their shop during those years.[3]

Corot received a scholarship to study at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen,[4] but left after having scholastic difficulties and entered a boarding school. He "was not a brilliant student, and throughout his entire school career he did not get a single nomination for a prize, not even for the drawing classes."[3] Unlike many masters who demonstrated early talent and inclinations toward art, before 1815 Corot showed no such interest. During those years he lived with the Sennegon family, whose patriarch was a friend of Corot's father and who spent much time with young Corot on nature walks. It was in this region that Corot made his first paintings after nature.[5] At nineteen, Corot was a "big child, shy and awkward. He blushed when spoken to. Before the beautiful ladies who frequented his mother's salon, he was embarrassed and fled like a wild thing... Emotionally, he was an affectionate and well-behaved son, who adored his mother and trembled when his father spoke."[6] When Corot's parents moved into a new residence in 1817, the 21-year-old Corot moved into the dormer-windowed room on the third floor, which became his first studio as well.[7]

With his father's help he apprenticed to a draper, but he hated commercial life and despised what he called "business tricks", yet he faithfully remained in the trade until he was 26, when his father consented to his adopting the profession of art. Later Corot stated, "I told my father that business and I were simply incompatible, and that I was getting a divorce."[8] The business experience proved beneficial, however, by helping him develop an aesthetic sense through his exposure to the colors and textures of the fabrics. Perhaps out of boredom, he turned to oil painting around 1821 and began immediately with landscapes.[7] Starting in 1822 after the death of his sister, Corot began receiving a yearly allowance of 1500 francs which adequately financed his new career, studio, materials, and travel for the rest of his life. He immediately rented a studio on quai Voltaire.[9]

During the period when Corot acquired the means to devote himself to art, landscape painting was on the upswing and generally divided into two camps: one―historical landscape by Neoclassicists in Southern Europe representing idealized views of real and fancied sites peopled with ancient, mythological, and biblical figures; and two―realistic landscape, more common in Northern Europe, which was largely faithful to actual topography, architecture, and flora, and which often showed figures of peasants. In both approaches, landscape artists would typically begin with outdoor sketching and preliminary painting, with finishing work done indoors. Highly influential upon French landscape artists in the early 19th century was the work of Englishmen John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, who reinforced the trend in favor of Realism and away from Neoclassicism.[10]

For a short period between 1821 and 1822, Corot studied with Achille Etna Michallon, a landscape painter of Corot's age who was a protégé of the painter Jacques-Louis David and who was already a well-respected teacher. Michallon had a great influence on Corot's career. Corot's drawing lessons included tracing lithographs, copying three-dimensional forms, and making landscape sketches and paintings outdoors, especially in the forests of Fontainebleau, the seaports along Normandy, and the villages west of Paris such as Ville-d'Avray (where his parents had a country house).[11] Michallon also exposed him to the principles of the French Neoclassic tradition, as espoused in the famous treatise of theorist Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, and exemplified in the works of French Neoclassicists Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, whose major aim was the representation of ideal Beauty in nature, linked with events in ancient times.

Though this school was on the decline, it still held sway in the Salon, the foremost art exhibition in France attended by thousands at each event. Corot later stated, "I made my first landscape from nature...under the eye of this painter, whose only advice was to render with the greatest scrupulousness everything I saw before me. The lesson worked; since then I have always treasured precision."[12] After Michallon's early death in 1822, Corot studied with Michallon's teacher, Jean-Victor Bertin, among the best known Neoclassic landscape painters in France, who had Corot draw copies of lithographs of botanical subjects to learn precise organic forms. Though holding Neoclassicists in the highest regard, Corot did not limit his training to their tradition of allegory set in imagined nature. His notebooks reveal precise renderings of tree trunks, rocks, and plants which show the influence of Northern realism. Throughout his career, Corot demonstrated an inclination to apply both traditions in his work, sometimes combining the two.[13]


First trip to Italy
La Trinité-des-Monts, seen from the Villa Medici, 1825–1828, oil on canvas. Paris: Musée du Louvre.

With his parents' support, Corot followed the well-established pattern of French painters who went to Italy to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance and to draw the crumbling monuments of Roman antiquity. A condition by his parents before leaving was that he paint a self-portrait for them, his first. Corot's stay in Italy from 1825 to 1828 was a highly formative and productive one, during which he completed over 200 drawings and 150 paintings.[14] He worked and traveled with several young French painters also studying abroad who painted together and socialized at night in the cafes, critiquing each other and gossiping. Corot learned little from the Renaissance masters (though later he cited Leonardo da Vinci as his favorite painter) and spent most of his time around Rome and in the Italian countryside.[15] The Farnese Gardens with its splendid views of the ancient ruins was a frequent destination, and he painted it at three different times of the day.[16] The training was particularly valuable in gaining an understanding of the challenges of both the mid-range and panoramic perspective, and in effectively placing man-made structures in a natural setting.[17] He also learned how to give buildings and rocks the effect of volume and solidity with proper light and shadow, while using a smooth and thin technique. Furthermore, placing suitable figures in a secular setting was a necessity of good landscape painting, to add human context and scale, and it was even more important in allegorical landscapes. To that end Corot worked on figure studies in native costume as well as nude.[18] During winter, he spent time in a studio but returned to work outside as quickly as weather permitted.[19] The intense light of Italy posed considerable challenges, "This sun gives off a light that makes me despair. It makes me feel the utter powerlessness of my palette."[20] He learned to master the light and to paint the stones and sky in subtle and dramatic variation.

It was not only Italian architecture and light which captured Corot's attention. The late-blooming Corot was entranced with Italian females as well: "They still have the most beautiful women in the world that I have met....their eyes, their shoulders, their hands are spectacular. In that, they surpass our women, but on the other hand, they are not their equals in grace and kindness...Myself, as a painter I prefer the Italian woman, but I lean toward the French woman when it comes to emotion."[20] In spite of his strong attraction to women, he wrote of his commitment to painting: "I have only one goal in life that I want to pursue faithfully: to make landscapes. This firm resolution keeps me from a serious attachment. That is to say, in marriage...but my independent nature and my great need for serious study make me take the matter lightly."[20]
The Bridge at Narni, 1826, oil on paper. Paris: Musée du Louvre. A product of one of the artist's youthful sojourns to Italy, and in Kenneth Clark's words "as free as the most vigorous Constable".
Striving for the Salon

During the six-year period following his first Italian visit and his second, Corot focused on preparing large landscapes for presentation at the Salon. Several of his salon paintings were adaptations of his Italian oil sketches reworked in the studio by adding imagined, formal elements consistent with Neoclassical principles.[21] An example of this was his first Salon entry, View at Narni (1827), where he took his quick, natural study of a ruin of a Roman aqueduct in dusty bright sun and transformed it into a falsely idyllic pastoral setting with giant shade trees and green lawns, a conversion meant to appeal to the Neoclassical jurors.[22] Many critics have valued highly his plein-air Italian paintings for their "germ of Impressionism", their faithfulness to natural light, and their avoidance of academic values, even though they were intended as studies.[23] Several decades later, Impressionism revolutionized art by a taking a similar approach—quick, spontaneous painting done in the out-of-doors; however, where the Impressionists used rapidly applied, un-mixed colors to capture light and mood, Corot usually mixed and blended his colors to get his dreamy effects.

When out of the studio, Corot traveled throughout France, mirroring his Italian methods, and concentrated on rustic landscapes. He returned to the Normandy coast and to Rouen, the city he lived in as a youth.[24] Corot also did some portraits of friends and relatives, and received his first commissions. His sensitive portrait of his niece, Laure Sennegon, dressed in powder blue, was one of his most successful and was later donated to the Louvre.[25] He typically painted two copies of each family portrait, one for the subject and one for the family, and often made copies of his landscapes as well.[26]
View of the Forest of Fontainebleau (1830)

In the spring of 1829, Corot came to Barbizon to paint in the Forest of Fontainebleau; he had first painted in the forest at Chailly in 1822. He returned to Barbizon in the autumn of 1830 and in the summer of 1831, where he made drawings and oil studies, from which he made a painting intended for the Salon of 1830; his "View of the Forest of Fontainebleau" (now in the National Gallery in Washington) and, for the salon of 1831, another "View of the Forest of Fontainebleau". While there he met the members of the Barbizon school; Théodore Rousseau, Paul Huet, Constant Troyon, Jean-François Millet, and the young Charles-François Daubigny.[27] Corot exhibited one portrait and several landscapes at the Salon in 1831 and 1833.[28] His reception by the critics at the Salon was cool and Corot decided to return to Italy, having failed to satisfy them with his Neoclassical themes.

Mid-career

During his two return trips to Italy, he visited Northern Italy, Venice, and again the Roman countryside. In 1835, Corot created a sensation at the Salon with his biblical painting Agar dans le desert (Hagar in the Wilderness), which depicted Hagar, Sarah's handmaiden, and the child Ishmael, dying of thirst in the desert until saved by an angel. The background was likely derived from an Italian study.[29] This time, Corot's unanticipated bold, fresh statement of the Neoclassical ideal succeeded with the critics by demonstrating "the harmony between the setting and the passion or suffering that the painter chooses to depict in it."[29] He followed that up with other biblical and mythological subjects, but those paintings did not succeed as well, as the Salon critics found him wanting in comparisons with Poussin.[30] In 1837, he painted his earliest surviving nude, The Nymph of the Seine. Later, he advised his students "The study of the nude, you see, is the best lesson that a landscape painter can have. If someone knows how, without any tricks, to get down a figure, he is able to make a landscape; otherwise he can never do it."[31]
Venise, La Piazzetta, 1835

Through the 1840s, Corot continued to have his troubles with the critics (many of his works were flatly rejected for Salon exhibition), nor were many works purchased by the public. While recognition and acceptance by the establishment came slowly, by 1845 Baudelaire led a charge pronouncing Corot the leader in the "modern school of landscape painting". While some critics found Corot's colors "pale" and his work having "naive awkwardness", Baudelaire astutely responded, "M. Corot is more a harmonist than a colorist, and his compositions, which are always entirely free of pedantry, are seductive just because of their simplicity of color."[32] In 1846, the French government decorated him with the cross of the Légion d'honneur and in 1848 he was awarded a second-class medal at the Salon, but he received little state patronage as a result.[33] His only commissioned work was a religious painting for a baptismal chapel painted in 1847, in the manner of the Renaissance masters.[34] Though the establishment kept holding back, other painters acknowledged Corot's growing stature. In 1847, Delacroix noted in his journal, "Corot is a true artist. One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth...Corot delves deeply into a subject: ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach."[35] Upon Delacroix's recommendation, the painter Constant Dutilleux bought a Corot painting and began a long and rewarding relationship with the artist, bringing him friendship and patrons.[35] Corot's public treatment dramatically improved after the Revolution of 1848, when he was admitted as a member of the Salon jury.[36] He was promoted to an officer of the Salon in 1867.

Having forsaken any long-term relationships with women, Corot remained very close to his parents even in his fifties. A contemporary said of him, "Corot is a man of principle, unconsciously Christian; he surrenders all his freedom to his mother...he has to beg her repeatedly to get permission to go out...for dinner every other Friday."[37] Apart from his frequent travels, Corot remained closely tethered to his family until his parents died, then at last he gained the freedom to go as he pleased.[38] That freedom allowed him to take on students for informal sessions. Future Impressionist Camille Pissarro was briefly among them.[35] Corot's vigor and perceptive advice impressed his students. Charles Daubigny stated, "He's a perfect Old Man Joy, this Father Corot. He is altogether a wonderful man, who mixes jokes in with his very good advice."[39] Another student said of Corot, "the newspapers had so distorted Corot, putting Theocritus and Virgil in his hands, that I was quite surprised to find him knowing neither Greek nor Latin...His welcome is very open, very free, very amusing: he speaks or listens to you while hopping on one foot or on two; he sings snatches of opera in a very true voice", but he has a "shrewd, biting side carefully hidden behind his good nature."[40]

By the mid-1850s, Corot's increasingly impressionistic style began to get the recognition that fixed his place in French art. "M. Corot excels...in reproducing vegetation in its fresh beginnings; he marvelously renders the firstlings of the new world."[41] From the 1850s on, Corot painted many landscape souvenirs and paysages, dreamy imagined paintings of remembered locations from earlier visits painted with lightly and loosely dabbed strokes.[42]

Later years
Plaque on the home of Camille Corot where he died 22 February 1875 at: 56, rue du Faubourg-Poissionnière, Paris, 10th arr.

In the 1860s, Corot was still mixing peasant figures with mythological ones, mixing Neoclassicism with Realism, causing one critic to lament, "If M. Corot would kill, once and for all, the nymphs of his woods and replace them with peasants, I should like him beyond measure."[43] In reality, in later life his human figures did increase and the nymphs did decrease, but even the human figures were often set in idyllic reveries.
St Sebastian Succoured by Holy Women, between 1851 and 1873,[44] oil on canvas, The Walters Art Museum

In later life, Corot's studio was filled with students, models, friends, collectors, and dealers who came and went under the tolerant eye of the master, causing him to quip, "Why is it that there are ten of you around me, and not one of you thinks to relight my pipe."[45] Dealers snapped up his works and his prices were often above 4,000 francs per painting.[39] With his success secured, Corot gave generously of his money and time. He became an elder of the artists' community and would use his influence to gain commissions for other artists. In 1871 he gave £2000 for the poor of Paris, under siege by the Prussians. (see: Franco-Prussian War) During the actual Paris Commune, he was at Arras with Alfred Robaut. In 1872 he bought a house in Auvers as a gift for Honoré Daumier, who by then was blind, without resources, and homeless. In 1875 he donated 10.000 francs to the widow of Millet in support of her children. His charity was near proverbial. He also financially supported the upkeep of a day center for children on rue Vandrezanne in Paris. In later life, he remained a humble and modest man, apolitical and happy with his luck in life, and held close the belief that "men should not puff themselves up with pride, whether they are emperors adding this or that province to their empires or painter who gain a reputation."[46]

Despite great success and appreciation among artists, collectors, and the more generous critics, his many friends considered, nevertheless, that he was officially neglected, and in 1874, a short time before his death, they presented him with a gold medal.[47] He died in Paris of a stomach disorder aged 78 and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

A number of followers called themselves Corot's pupils. The best known are Camille Pissarro, Eugène Boudin, Berthe Morisot, Stanislas Lépine, Antoine Chintreuil, François-Louis Français, Charles Le Roux, and Alexandre Defaux.
Art and technique
Ville d'Avray, ca. 1867, oil on canvas. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art.

Corot is a pivotal figure in landscape painting. His work simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism. Of him Claude Monet exclaimed in 1897, "There is only one master here—Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing."[48] His contributions to figure painting are hardly less important; Degas preferred his figures to his landscapes, and the classical figures of Picasso pay overt homage to Corot's influence.

Historians have divided his work into periods, but the points of division are often vague, as he often completed a picture years after he began it. In his early period, he painted traditionally and "tight"—with minute exactness, clear outlines, thin brush work, and with absolute definition of objects throughout, with a monochromatic underpainting or ébauche.[49] After he reached his 50th year, his methods changed to focus on breadth of tone and an approach to poetic power conveyed with thicker application of paint; and about 20 years later, from about 1865 onwards, his manner of painting became more lyrical, affected with a more impressionistic touch. In part, this evolution in expression can be seen as marking the transition from the plein-air paintings of his youth, shot through with warm natural light, to the studio-created landscapes of his late maturity, enveloped in uniform tones of silver. In his final 10 years he became the "Père (Father) Corot" of Parisian artistic circles, where he was regarded with personal affection, and acknowledged as one of the five or six greatest landscape painters the world had seen, along with Hobbema, Claude Lorrain, Turner and Constable. In his long and productive life, he painted over 3,000 paintings.[50]

Though often credited as a precursor of Impressionist practice, Corot approached his landscapes more traditionally than is usually believed. Compared to the Impressionists who came later, Corot's palette is restrained, dominated with browns and blacks ("forbidden colors" among the Impressionists) along with dark and silvery green. Though appearing at times to be rapid and spontaneous, usually his strokes were controlled and careful, and his compositions well-thought out and generally rendered as simply and concisely as possible, heightening the poetic effect of the imagery. As he stated, "I noticed that everything that was done correctly on the first attempt was more true, and the forms more beautiful."[51]

Corot's approach to his subjects was similarly traditional. Although he was a major proponent of plein-air studies, he was essentially a studio painter and few of his finished landscapes were completed before the motif. For most of his life, Corot would spend his summers travelling and collecting studies and sketches, and his winters finishing more polished, market-ready works.[52] For example the title of his Bathers of the Borromean Isles (1865–70) refers to Lake Maggiore in Italy, despite the fact that Corot had not been to Italy in 20 years.[53] His emphasis on drawing images from the imagination and memory rather than direct observation was in line with the tastes of the Salon jurors, of which he was a member.[54]

In the 1860s, Corot became interested in photography, taking photos himself and becoming acquainted with many early photographers, which had the effect of suppressing his painting palette even more in sympathy with the monochromic tones of photographs. This had the result of making his paintings even less dramatic but somewhat more poetic, a result which caused some critics to cite a monotony in his later work. Théophile Thoré wrote that Corot "has only a single octave, extremely limited and in a minor key; a musician would say. He knows scarcely more than a single time of day, the morning, and a single color, pale grey."[55] Corot responded:

What there is to see in painting, or rather what I am looking for, is the form, the whole, the value of the tones...That is why for me the color comes after, because I love more than anything else the overall effect, the harmony of the tones, while color gives you a kind of shock that I don’t like. Perhaps it is the excess of this principal that makes people say I have leaden tones.[43]

In his aversion to shocking color, Corot sharply diverged from the up-and-coming Impressionists, who embraced experimentation with vivid hues.
Bornova, İzmir, 1873

In addition to his landscapes (so popular was the late style that there exist numerous forgeries), Corot produced a number of prized figure pictures. While the subjects were sometimes placed in pastoral settings, these were mostly studio pieces, drawn from the live model with both specificity and subtlety. Like his landscapes, they are characterized by a contemplative lyricism, with his late paintings L’Algérienne (Algerian Woman) and La Jeune Grecque (The Greek Girl) being fine examples.[56] Corot painted about fifty portraits, mostly of family and friends.[57] He also painted thirteen reclining nudes, with his Les Repos (1860) strikingly similar in pose to Ingres famous Le Grande Odalisque (1814), but Corot's female is instead a rustic bacchante. In perhaps his last figure painting, ‘’Lady in Blue’’ (1874), Corot achieves an effect reminiscent of Degas, soft yet expressive. In all cases of his figure painting, the color is restrained and is remarkable for its strength and purity. Corot also executed many etchings and pencil sketches. Some of the sketches used a system of visual symbols—circles representing areas of light and squares representing shadow. He also experimented with the cliché verre process—a hybrid of photography and engraving.[58] Starting in the 1830s, Corot also painted decorative panels and walls in the homes of friends, aided by his students.[59]

Corot summed up his approach to art around 1860: "I interpret with my art as much as with my eye."[60]

The works of Corot are housed in museums in France and the Netherlands, Britain, North America and Russia
Forgeries
The Little Bird Nesters (1873-1874) detail

The strong market for Corot's works and his relatively easy-to-imitate late painting style resulted in a huge production of Corot forgeries between 1870 and 1939. René Huyghe famously quipped that "Corot painted three thousand canvases, ten thousand of which have been sold in America". Although this is a humorous exaggeration, thousands of forgeries have been amassed, with the Jousseaume collection alone containing 2,414 such works.[61] Adding to the problem was Corot's lax attitude which encouraged copying and forgery.[62] He allowed his students to copy his works and to even borrow the works for later return, he would touch up and sign student and collector copies, and he would loan works to professional copiers and to rental agencies.[63] According to Corot cataloguist Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, at one copying studio "The master's complacent brush authenticated these replicas with a few personal and decisive retouching. When he was no longer there to finish his "doubles", they went on producing them without him."[64] The cataloging of Corot's works in an attempt to separate the copies from the originals backfired when forgers used the publications as guides to expand and refine their bogus paintings.[65]
In popular culture

Two of Corot's works are featured and play an important role in the plot of the French film L'Heure d'été (English title Summer Hour). The film was produced by the Musée d'Orsay, and the two works were lent by the museum for the making of the film.

There is a street named Rue Corot on Île des Sœurs, Quebec, named for the artist.
Selected works

The Bridge at Narni (1826), Musée du Louvre
Venise, La Piazetta (1835), Musée du Louvre
Le Baptême du Christ (1845-1847), Paris, Eglise Saint-Nicolas-du Chardonnet.
Une Matinée (1850), Musée d'Orsay
Le concert champêtre (1857), Musée Condé, Chantilly
Macbeth and the Witches (1859), Wallace Collection
Baigneuses au Bord d'un Lac (1861), private collection
Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld (1861), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Meadow by the Swamp, National Museum of Serbia
Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864), Musée du Louvre
L'Arbre brisé (1865)
Ville d'Avray (1867), National Gallery of Art
Femme Lisant (1869), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Nymphes et Faunes (before 1870), Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama
L'Albanese (1872)
Pastorale — Souvenir d'Italie (1873), Glasgow Art Gallery
Biblis (1875)
Landscape (unknown), Bass-Dwyer Collection

See also

Effets de soir
History of painting
Western painting

Notes

His birth certificate initially indicated 27 messidor (July 15), but this was corrected to 28
Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, and Vincent Pomerède, Corot, Abrams, New York, 1996, p. 5, ISBN 0-87099-769-6
Tinterow, et al., p. 6
Lycée Pierre Corneille de Rouen - History
Tinterow, et al., p. 30
Tinterow, et al., pp. 7-8
Tinterow, et al., p. 8
Vincent Pomarède & Gérard de Wallens, Corot: Extraordinary Landscapes, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1996, p. 20, ISBN 0-8109-6327-2
Peter Galassi, Corot in Italy, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 57, ISBN 0-300-04957-9
Tinterow, et al., p. 12
Tinterow, et al., p. 35
Tinterow, et al., p. 14
Tinterow, et al., p. 15
Galassi, p. 11
Tinterow, et al., p. 414
Tinterow, et al., p. 42
Tinterow, et al., pp. 23-24
Tinterow, et al., p. 57
Tinterow, et al., p. 22
Tinterow, et al., p. 20
Tinterow, et al., p. 76
Galassi, p. 2
Galassi, pp. 6-7, 11
Tinterow, et al., p. 111
Tinterow, et al., p. 116
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 69
Pomaréde, Vincent, Le ABCdaire de Corot et le passage français (1996), Flammarion, Paris, (ISBN 2-08-012466-8)
Tinterow, et al., p. 27
Tinterow, et al., p. 156
Tinterow, et al., p. 162
Tinterow, et al., p. 164
Tinterow, et al., p. 211
Tinterow, et al., p. 142
Tinterow, et al., p. 208
Tinterow, et al., p. 150
Tinterow, et al., p. 145
Tinterow, et al., p. 148
Tinterow, et al., p. 149
Tinterow, et al., p. 271
Tinterow, et al., p. 152
Tinterow, et al., p. 227
Tinterow, et al., p. 262
Tinterow, et al., p. 266
"St Sebastian Succoured by Holy Women". The Walters Art Museum.
Tinterow, et al., p. 270
Tinterow, et al., p. 272
Tinterow, et al., p. 273
Tinterow, et al., p. xiv
Sarah Herring, "Six Paintings by Corot: Methods, Materials and Sources", National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Volume 3, 2009, p. 86 Accessed May 26, 2014
Tinterow, et al., p. 267
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 33
Fronia E. Wissman, "Corot (Jean-Baptiste-)Camille," The Dictionary of Art, vol. 7, New York, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 878
"Bathers of the Borromean Isles," Great French Paintings from the Clark: Barbizon through Impressionism, New York and Williamstown, MA, Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. and Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, 2011, p. 56
Annie Pagès, “COROT Jean-Baptise Camille,” Bénézit : Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, vol. 3, Paris: Gründ, 1999, p. 903
Tinterow, et al., pp. 289-290
Tinterow, et al., p. 334, 352
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 70
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 101
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 102
Pomarède & de Wallens, p. 109
Tinterow, et al., p. 383
Marc Fehlmann, 'Menn copiste II. Barthélemy Menn et ses contemporains', in: Genava. Revue d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, Vol. 57, 2009, pp. 61-91, esp. 83-87.
Tinterow, et al., p. 389
Tinterow, et al., p. 390

Tinterow, et al., p. 393

References

Clark, Kenneth (1991). Landscape into Art. New York: HarperCollins.
Leymarie, J. (1979). Corot. Discovering the nineteenth century. Geneva: Skira. ISBN 0-8478-0238-8
Tinterow, Gary, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1996). Corot. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0870997696

Attribution

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Corot, Jean-Baptiste Camille". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Bertrand Dumas, Le Baptême du Christ (1845-1847), in Trésors des églises parisiennes, éditions Parigramme, Paris, 2005, pp. 104–105.

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