Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

“ Daubigny. By Jean Laran. 48 reproductions. Paris: Librairie centrale des Beaux-Arts. n. d. (L’Art de Notre Temps.)
Charles-François Daubigny; Painter and Etcher. By Robert J. Wickenden. 15 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 177-206. Boston. 1913.
——— ———. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914. (Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille (1796-1875)
Corot. By Loys Delteil. An original etching and 102 reproductions. Paris: L’auteur. 1910. (Le peintre-graveur illustré, XIXe et XXe siècles. Vol. 5.) ”

“ He was first a clerk in a dry-goods store, but his tastes led him early to study art. His paintings made their way slowly, but wealth and fame finally came to him. Corot's landscapes were true copies of nature. His favorite subjects were misty lakes, rivers smothered in vapor and the quiet of moonlight or sunrise, which he painted as a poet would have written of them. He had great influence on young French artists, who admired and liked him for his genius, kindliness and generosity. ”

“ Corot, Jean Baptiste, a celebrated French landscape-painter, born at Paris; was 26 years of age before he began to apply himself to art, which he did by study in Italy and Rome, returning to Paris in 1827, where he began to exhibit, and continued to exhibit for nearly 50 years; it was long before his pieces revealed what was in him and the secret of his art; he appeared also as a poet as well as a painter, giving free play to his emotions and moving those of others (1796-1875) . ”

“ One is losing sight of everything, but one still feels that everything is there. The birds, those voices of the flowers, say their evening prayer, the dew scatters pearls [Pg 699] upon the grass, the nymphs fly ... everything is again darkened; the pond alone glitters. Good, there is my picture completed." It was only gradually that Corot reached the style upon which his fame rests. He was born in Paris of humble parents, and served for some years in a draper's shop. He was twenty-two before he was able to follow his artistic bent. ”

“ At that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been had he remained a sensible draper.
Best of all, Corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale moons and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the theatre. There he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him, weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child.
After he had anything to give away, Corot was the most madly generous of men. It was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother artist, Millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. ”

“ A SHALLOW RIVER. FROM A PAINTING BY THÉODORE ROUSSEAU.
With all this variety, however, the true value of Corot's work lies in the expression of the spirit of the man himself. It is often possible, and it is always theoretically desirable, to separate the personality of a painter from his production in any critical consideration of his achievement. It is at least only fair to believe that the light which shines from so many canvases is the true expression of many a life which is clouded to our superficial view. With Corot, however, it is impossible to make this separation. ”

“ During the siege of Paris he gave both time and money to help the wounded. "Papa Corot," as the people called him, was greatly beloved.
The demand for his paintings increased. He said that when youth left him, honor and fame came to make him still the happiest man in the world.
Questions about the artist. In what ways was Corot favored? What did his father and mother do? What did they hope to make of Corot? Where was he sent? With whom did he live? Where did they walk? How did this influence Corot? ”

“ It has been noted that most great landscape painters have been city-bred, a remarkable fact. Constable and Gainsborough were born and bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. Corot's parents were Parisians of the purest dye, having been court-dressmakers to Napoleon I.; and when Corot finally determined to leave the draper's shop and become a painter, his father said: "You shall have a yearly allowance of 1,200 francs, and if you can live on that, you can do as you please." ”

“ Yet many of them are fine in composition, and in all cases the colour is remarkable for its strength and purity. Corot also executed a few etchings and pencil sketches. In his landscape pictures Corot was more traditional in his method of work than is usually believed. If even his latest tree-painting and arrangement are compared with such a Claude as that which hangs in the Bridgewater gallery, it will be observed how similar is Corot’s method and also how masterly are his results.
The works of Corot are scattered over France and the Netherlands, Great Britain and America. ”

“ The artist who painted this picture, Jean Baptiste Corot, tells us that when he was a small boy he used to lean out of his window at night, long after his mother and father thought him safe in bed, to watch the clouds, the sky, and the trees. He continued this study as a young man, and soon made friends with three other young men, all artists (Rousseau, Daubigny, and Dupré) who were also studying nature. All had studios and painted in the city; but they were always longing for a glimpse of the country. One day the four started out together for a day's outing, each taking his painter's outfit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was fitting that when he lay dying as cheerfully as he had lived, contented that he had "had good parents and good friends," beautiful landscapes flitted before his eyes, "more beautiful than painting." On the morning of February 22, 1875, his servant urged him to eat to sustain his strength; but he gently shook his head, saying: "Papa Corot will breakfast in heaven to-day."
THE EDGE OF THE FOREST (FONTAINEBLEAU) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is very singular and varied, and one of the most complicated in existence. In his first works, which are apparently as simple as Corot's, he does not employ the process of colour-spots. But many of the works in his second manner are a combination of drawing, painting and pastel. He has invented a kind of engraving mixed with wash-drawing, pastel crayon crushed with brushes of special pattern. Here one can find again his meticulous spirit. He has many of the qualities of the scientist; he is as much chemist as painter. It has been said of him, that he was a great artist of the decadence. ”

“ The spirit of Corot's painting was by far more akin to her own, a native endowment in both. She, too, loved the ideal in nature, as when morning mists soften and blend sky, earth and water into almost a dream of what one sees at mid-day. Before she had seen a Corot her own color schemes were often in the silvery tones.
Many of her best paintings are in Boston, New York, and Paris. To the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876) she sent "A French Village," and to the Paris Exhibition of 1878 a choice canvas, "Near Fontainebleau." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But these have disappeared; few or none of his juvenile efforts have come down to us.
Corot returned to Paris, after many years spent in Rome, during the reign of Louis-Philippe, when affairs were beginning to stir themselves in literature and art. In 1839 his “Site d’Italie” and a “Soir” were shown at the annual Salon,—though, of course, he had already been an exhibitor there,—and inspired a sonnet of Théophile Gautier, which concludes:
“Corot, ton nom modest, écrit dans un coin noir.” ”

“ As the greater interest, and the vaster tumult, possessed his frail soul, so every lesser interest, tumult, died to him. There came an early day when he no longer cared for his own life; and another day, when his maniac fingers rent the hairs from his head.
As to this man, the great Corot said to me:
"Really, one does not know whether to laugh or weep over such a business. Observe, for one thing, how diversely men are made! Their are minds precisely so sensitive as a cupful of melted silver; every breath will roughen and darken them: and what of the simoon, tornado? ”

“ The history of art has few examples to offer of so long a spring. Corot had the privilege of never growing old; his life was a continual rejuvenescence. The works which made him Corot are the youthful works of an old man, the matured creations of a grey-headed artist, who—like Titian—remained for ever young ”

“ To those who were inclined to undervalue the pure, sweet spirit which shone through his work, and to complain of the representation of a world in which no breeze stronger than a zephyr blew, in which the birds always sang, and the shepherd piped to a flock unconscious of the existence of wolves, there were shown efforts in so many and various directions as to forever silence their reproach of monotony, so often directed against Corot's work. ”

“ These painters had been summoned from their Italian homes by Francis I., to decorate the Palace of Fontainebleau. The second great group of painters who had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupré, Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the painter of peasants.
Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary school at Rouen could give him. He was intended by his parents for something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world was intended. Corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper ”

“ Such works apart, his art has given us a message from the purest source of poetry and painting, couched in a language which is thoroughly of our time; and in this year, which is the centenary of his birth, it can be said that no other painter of the century, save the graver Millet, has held fast that which was good in the art of the past, and so enriched it by added truth and beauty as Corot. ”

“ Something is just going to happen—somebody is coming, some one we love—you can almost detect a faint perfume, long remembered, never to be forgotten. A Corot is a tryst with all that you most admire and love best—it speaks of youth, joyous, hopeful, expectant youth. The flavor is Grecian, and if the Greeks had left us any paintings they would all have been just like Corot's. ”

“ The other trait peculiar to Corot's representation of nature and expression of himself is his color. No painter ever exhibited, I think, quite such a sense of refinement in so narrow a gamut. Green and gray, of course, predominate and set the key, but he has an interestingly varied palette on the hither side of splendor whose subtleties are capable of giving exquisite pleasure. Never did anyone use tints with such positive force. ”

“ Full of breadth and feeling for the subtleties and poetry of nature, he has never been surpassed. Examples of his work in England can sometimes be seen in the French Gallery, the Hanover Gallery and at Goupil’s, but it must be remembered that great as Corot is, there is much of his work that is bad. |Daubigny.| Another great painter is Daubigny, a contemporary of Corot’s, and though not such a subtle observer as Corot, still he is a painter whose work has had great influence and will live though it has been surpassed by younger men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a swarm of stars--all yields to illusion. The sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the soul, the sun of art awakens. Bon! there is my picture done!
In writing those letters, Corot made literature as well as pictures. That little word "bing!" appears also in his paintings, as little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which, high-lightened, accents the whole.
PLATE--DANCE OF THE NYMPHS
There could hardly be a more charming painting than this which hangs in the Louvre. It is of a half-shut-in landscape of tall trees, their branches mingling ”