Sidney Allnutt

“ It is the work of a man who “knows,” who is able to take hold of essentials, and let non-essentials go, with a certainty of discrimination. Profound knowledge, so thoroughly assimilated as to be instinctive in its application, can alone account for both the completeness and simplicity of the landscape, the result achieved with apparently so absolute a lack of effort.
To come upon a Corot in a gallery is like stepping out of the noisy glare of the market-place into the cool stillness of a church. ”

“ It is always a “moment” that is seized in Corot’s paintings, with the exception of some of the earliest. Nature is surprised with her fairest charms unveiled, in a passing emotion, of laughter or of tears. There is life, movement, the tremble of being, in everything set down. The air is palpitant [Pg 77] with colour, rainbows are dissolved in an atmosphere that clothes everything in magic and mystery.
Beneath the gay confidence of the painting, subserving the emotion of the moment, what knowledge is shown in these pictures! ”

“ The play of light filtering through foliage has never been more beautifully rendered upon canvas, or with a closer approximation to the truth of Nature, than in the “Paysage,” reproduced here. The manner in which the tree has been portrayed, the body and soul of it, is not less astonishing. The landscape is a masterpiece among masterpieces, and an impressive witness to Corot’s amazingly sensitive faculty of apprehending what was in front of him, both with eye and mind. ”

“ From first to last Corot was as independent as he was industrious. He strove always to see Nature with his own eyes, and to keep his vision clear and simple. Whether or not other painters had a grander or nobler vision was nothing to him. ”

“ The only other works of art which have ever given me quite the same impression in this direction are one or two of those dreaming Buddhas that, wherever they may be, seem to be shrined in a stillness emanating from themselves. ”

“ As the wise man says, if one follows, one is behind.” And again—“Art should be an individual expression of the verities, an ardour that concedes nothing.”
It is on the face of it rather a hopeless task to attempt to trace the artistic pedigree of a painter who, at all costs, will be individual with “an ardour that concedes nothing”; and it would not help much towards an understanding of him. At the same time, it would be a mistake to suppose that Corot was quite so independent of the influences around as, perhaps, he imagined himself to be. ”

“ No one ever worked more constantly and faithfully from Nature, or became more intimately acquainted with the subtle outward expressions of her innermost moods; but the profound knowledge thus gained was only treated as the poet treats a wide vocabulary ”

“ It is more than likely that many of us are making mistakes almost as serious to-day, so we need not find such an attitude incredible.
PLATE VII.—SOUVENIR D’ITALIE
Corot at the height of his powers is seen in the “Souvenir d’Italie.” The thousand subtle nuances of exquisite colour in the luminous sky, the refined drawing and firm painting of the trees, and the happy confidence revealed by every brush mark upon the canvas, make it one of the most delightful and, we may say, most “lovable” of its creator’s works. ”

“ There is in it something that does not belong to one time, but to all times; not to one place, but to all places. It is elemental and universal, and instinct with a vitality and youth that unnumbered to-morrows can have no power to destroy.
Even those critics who most strongly opposed the canons Corot professed—and there were many of them—were often unable to condemn a heresy in which faith was so justified by works: coming to curse, like Balaam, they remained to bless. A far more trying ordeal the artist had to undergo in [Pg 12] the intemperate rhapsodies of enthusiastic admirers. ”

“ He may be poet, painter, or musician, but the need for understanding what he does is infinitely less than that of learning what he is. This is not to say that, in the case of the artist, technique is beneath consideration; but it is to say that it must not be considered first. Trembling script sometimes give the authentic gospel its birth in words, and a true vision may [Pg 20] be recorded by an uncertain hand. To lose sight of the artist in contemplating the technique of the work by which he reveals himself is to sacrifice the substance for the shadow.
Corot was a great artist. ”

“ In considering what a painter has done it is natural enough to be preoccupied with his method, to become immersed in an analysis of his technique. There will be an attempt to determine whether he is faithfully obedient to the accepted canons, or modifying and adapting, if not it may be defying them. ”

“ Italy gave to his delicacy some of its strength, invested the most tender-hearted of painters with the touch of sternness that could alone save his work from becoming invertebrate: but it could not materially alter his habit of vision, or turn into dramatic shape an inherently lyrical gift. He saw Nature as a song in France first of all and last of all; Italy only helped [Pg 57] him to give the song a more severe metrical basis than it might otherwise have possessed. Much that was sweet in Corot it would seem that the relentless landscapes and pitiless skies of Italy helped to make strong. ”

“ There are fashions in art as in everything else: for reasons which the dealers could often disclose if they would, this or that artist’s work is suddenly boomed, and for a time commands absurdly big prices in the auction rooms, only to find its proper level again when it is no longer to anybody’s interest to maintain an artificial valuation. But it is difficult to believe that the passing of years will do anything to diminish the fame of Corot, or lessen the [Pg 11] prices which connoisseurs are willing to pay for the possession of his work. ”

“ It does not record one of those tender twilight effects in which, as may be believed, the painter found his keenest pleasure, but the quiet glory of a golden afternoon. The simple landscape is bathed in the most wonderful of painted sunshine, and possesses an extraordinary verity. The material essentials of the scene are set down with an unerring regard for truth, but it is in interpreting its “sentiment” that the most notable success has been achieved.
“It was in Morvan that Corot picked up with the peasant, and found in him many things fit to be learned. ”

“ However, figure to yourself Corot fully embarked on his career as a painter. He is, roughly, twenty-five years of age, and for stock-in-trade has glowing health, a certain familiarity with pencil and brush already acquired, an unquenchable enthusiasm, and so many francs a year. On the whole it is the outfit of a very happy and fortunate young man. ”

“ Rather will both increase, there is reason to think, as under the winnowing of Time’s wings the chaff is separated from the grain, and many a painter hailed as a master to-day is scorned if not forgotten. For whatever may happen, it is impossible to believe that the work of Corot will ever become old-fashioned. ”

“ If you have been sincere in your emotion you will be able to pass it on to others.” So said Corot to a pupil, and “L’Etang” would in itself be sufficient to prove that he knew how to practise what he preached. It is a variant on a simple motive that he was never weary of, and that he knew how to invest with new beauties every time it came to him.
He claimed for the artist an entire independence. “You must interpret nature with entire simplicity, and according to your personal sentiment, altogether detaching yourself from what you know of the old masters or of contemporaries. ”

“ Of the man Corot there are many portraits both in pen and pencil, that help to give an outward shape to the more intimate revelation of personality to be found in his work. [Pg 64]
One of the most interesting is a portrait by the artist of himself as a young man. He is sitting, a burly, broad-shouldered figure, before his easel. The face looks out from the canvas square and strong, but the full-lipped mouth is sensitive, almost tremulous, and betrays the nature of the man even more surely than the alert eyes ”

“ In any case only a few, comparatively speaking, are likely to be either interested or benefited.
It is altogether another matter when an artist is approached. How he conveys his message is of much less importance than what is conveyed. ”

“ As a member of a farrier’s numerous family, with the forge for sitting-room, and its fires to assuage the cold of mortals and [Pg 48] of metals, and soup for fuel, and the blue smock of the country for raiment, Corot saved money. He saved money out of the 1200 francs of his allowance; even the cost of canvas and paints did not bring his expenditure to three francs a day. His austerity meant Rome, but it was not a hard road for him to follow. Never was a man less provoked to any of the pampered ways of living. ”

“ Only in this way will you do work of real feeling. I know gifted people who will not avail themselves of their power. Such people seem to me like a billiard-player, whose adversary is constantly giving him good openings, but who makes no use of them. ”

“ The picture of Corot sketching in shorthand shows him when the long and close study of Nature had enabled him to generalise with confidence, and when a memory, always retentive, had been trained to a pitch that made it far more reliable than any sketchbook memoranda. Although he always expressed impatience with the idea that anything worth doing could be done merely by taking pains, Corot was the least apt of men to spare any pains that were essential to his purpose ”

“ I remember a studio gathering at which Corot was discussed. I wish the master, who always loved to be praised by those who could understand and were sincere, could have heard what was said of him. At length some one said, “Corot was a great artist. It is true that he also happened to [Pg 18] be a great painter.” The words seemed to me to have meanings.
A painter is a man who does something; an artist one who is something. ”

“ A deep spiritual happiness and content make the old, wrinkled face a beautiful one. It is the face of one who, to use a lovely old phrase, “walked with God,” and of whom it was said, “c’est le Saint Vincent de Paul de la peinture.”
As one of his friends said, Corot was “adorably good.” He was a good son, for all that he found himself unable to fall in with his father’s desire to make him a successful draper: and the fact that “at home [Pg 67] ” his outstanding abilities were never recognised, could not in the least abate the warmth of his family affections. ”

“ There were other critics at this same period who were less hampered by preconceived notions, and came to a very different conclusion than those who were able to [Pg 61] dismiss the whole Nature school with contempt as “pampered humbugs.” Delacroix could see that Corot was not “only a man of landscapes” but “a rare genius,” and he was not alone. Every year, as one masterpiece after another appeared at the Salon from the “mud-dauber’s” brush, the general body of artists and art-lovers were more disposed to give him the rank that was his due. ”

“ These things, like the honest humour and good-comradeship of a man afield, were in his blood; but Morvan and Morvan’s blacksmith, and daily things done with the Morvan peasantry, developed the [Pg 51] peasant in the painter. Corot’s was nearer to the peasant’s character than Millet’s even; for the emotional gloom of Millet’s outlook, his sense of the price paid for life, his sense of death and toil, of the significance of the seed and the scythe, made him a person too great and dreadful to be familiar with those for whom he thought and felt. ”

“ The father of Corot the painter was Louis Jacques Corot, who, if he escaped being altogether a hairdresser, only did so by a narrow margin. One would rather like to imagine him as another “Carrousel, the barber of Meridian Street.” ”

“ As a rule he first of all puts in his sky, then the more important masses in the middle of the composition, then those to the left and to the right; he then picks out the forms of the reflections in the water, if there is water, and so establishes the planes of his picture, his masses falling in one behind the other while one watches him. ”

“ It will be an admirable thing to paint.’ The morning of the day he died, the 22nd of February, 1875, he said to the woman servant who brought him some nourishment, ‘Le père Corot is lunching up there to-day. [Pg 75] ’”
“It will be hard to replace the artist; the man can never be replaced,” was one fine tribute to his memory; and another, “Death might have had pity and paused before cutting short so sweet a life-work.”
A sale of some 600 of Corot’s works took place in the May and June following his death. It realised nearly two million francs, or £80,000. ”