An artwork on Galleree from Cleveland Museum of Art.
About the artwork
La Cervara, the Roman Campagnac. 1830–31
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
Camille Corot's earlier biographers presented him as a naive artist separated from commercial concerns who painted whatever pleased him in the French countryside and from his own emotions. For these writers his importance lay in his loosely painted, atmospheric landscapes, for which later modernists called him the precursor to impressionism. This conception of the artist has undergone significant revision with recent scholarship. Corot never seemed to accept the impressionists' more radical work, especially their enthusiasm for contemporary urban and suburban themes. He represented timeless, rural views disconnected from the industrialization and modernization of nineteenth-century France.
Following his father in the clothing trade, Corot worked for eight years before the death of his younger sister in 1821 provided him with the additional income (her annual allowance) to enable him to devote himself to painting. In 1822 he began to study with the landscape painter Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822), winner of the first Grand Prix de Rome in historicized landscape, and after Michallon's early death that year, with Bertin (q.v.). Both Michallon and Bertin had trained with Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), whose later eighteenth-century treatise on landscape painting practice urged artists to study nature closely. In addition, Michallon frequented the village of Barbizon and the forest of Fontainebleau, which would become important subjects for Corot and the group of painters known as the Barbizon school.
In 1825 Corot made his first trip to Italy, following in the tradition of the French academy but also the independent precedent of the seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorrain. There Corot joined an international circle of artists, including Léopold Robert (1794-1835) and Aligny (q.v.), who struggled to resolve the contradictory phases of empirical study out of doors and synthetic recreation in the studio. From Rome, he sent his first submissions to the Paris Salon in 1827, among them The View at Narni (National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa). These early Italian views generally feature a bright, warm light with few areas in shadow.
Corot gradually shifted from this early style to one in the 1840s that frequently included larger figures in the middle ground, more complex light effects, and a duller, earthy palette of greens and browns. He continued to use his outdoor works as models for finished canvases but freely adapted the compositions, forms, lighting, and color. The question of finish did not only pertain to the relationship between plein-air studies and studio compositions, which he called paysage composé (invented landscape). Corot sometimes added figures to landscapes that he had painted years earlier and even asked fellow painters such as Diaz de la Peña (q.v.) to paint them. His titles often referred to the geographical location that inspired the image, and some included the word souvenir (broad-ly translated as memory), which suggests recreating or revisiting some experience.
The critical reception of Corot's work fluctuated. His first Salon submissions passed the jury, but during the 1830s he was first overlooked and then attacked by the critics. By the 1840s his fortunes had improved, and he even sold one Salon picture to the French state. In more radical circles, the critic-poet Charles Baudelaire held Corot up as a leader in contemporary landscape painting. Corot received the Legion of Honor in 1846 as well as a municipal commission to decorate the baptismal fonts in the church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris.
In the early 1850s Corot transformed his style again. He developed silvery tones and diffuse lighting effects applied in a few thin layers, over which he added small touches of brighter color for highlights. The soft glimmer and evocative atmosphere of these later works earned him commercial and critical success. During the last decade, Corot turned toward the single figure as subject. The meditative poses and expressions of these figures reminded some contemporary critics of seventeenth-century painting, especially the realism of Spanish and Dutch pictures. But Corot's landscapes remained his most admired work, and during his lifetime imitations or fakes were sold under his name.
Corot based his large oil painting on drawings and oil sketches made outdoors. Attracted to the beauty of the Italian countryside, he often sketched around Rome, where he lived from 1825 to 1828. This painting's highly structured composition, based on forms moving into the distance along a series of diagonals, is characteristic of Corot's early style and recalls the classical landscapes of 17th-century painter Nicholas Poussin.
In 1845, the French poet Charles Baudelaire proclaimed Corot the leading painter of the modern landscape.
oil on fabric
Framed: 130 x 167.5 x 9.5 cm (51 3/16 x 65 15/16 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 97.6 x 135.8 cm (38 7/16 x 53 7/16 in.)
Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund
In the embrace of the Italian countryside, a young artist named Corot found sanctuary. The year was between 1825 and 1828, a time when he roamed the enchanting landscapes surrounding Rome, his heart alive with inspiration. With every brushstroke and pencil mark, he captured the unfolding beauty of nature, sketching under the bright Italian sun, where the air was scented with blooming wildflowers and the distant whispers of nature beckoned.
Each oil sketch he painted was a piece of his spirit, an echo of the tranquil moments he experienced outdoors. As Corot sat among the olive trees or beside the serene waters, he poured his observations into his works, creating a bounty of art that spoke to his love of the world around him.
One of his masterpieces emerged from this creative blossoming—a large oil painting that encapsulated the magic of his surroundings. Its highly structured composition drew the viewer's eye along a winding path of diagonals, a journey into the depths of a harmonious landscape. The echoes of Nicholas Poussin, the great 17th-century painter, lingered in Corot’s approach, reminding us of the classical traditions that formed the backbone of his early style.
In this painting, the viewer is invited to step into a tranquil dream, where the lines of earth fold away into the horizon and the sky kisses the distant mountains. Corot’s brush captured not just the scene but the very essence of the Italian countryside, inviting us to pause and appreciate the peace that resides within nature’s embrace.
About the artist
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