Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Returning from his first trip to Italy, Corot focused on preparing large-scale landscapes for the Salon and traveled through France where he came into contact with members of the Barbizon School, notably Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867). However, he never shared their interest in Realism and his real influence remains with artists like Claude Lorraine. By 1850, Corot’s reputation was assured; he produced many smaller scale landscapes with a more gestural style anticipating some of the changes that were to come with the advent of Impressionism. His landscapes are increasingly atmospheric, the trees often softly defined with shimmering foliage consisting of suggestive dots and dabs. His canvases often prepared with thin grey grounds contributing to the wispy silver-hued ambiance so characteristic of his later style. Corot’s late landscapes were avidly collected in the United States in the late nineteenth century.

Corot’s figure paintings constitute a smaller and less well-known portion of his oeuvre. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime his figures were highly important. Corot frequently depicted his models wearing traditional Italianate costumes. He tackled the human form through bold brushwork often balanced by the occasional finely rendered detail. Corot’s figures served as models for later nineteenth and early twentieth-century artists including Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso.

Corot’s sketches were as much admired by his contemporaries as now and never more appreciated than by Monet, who remarked in 1897: “there is only one artist here – Corot. We are nothing to him, nothing.”