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| An Artist Painting in the Forest of Fountainebleau (1850-1855) Camille Corot / Private Collection |
At 26, frustrated with his career as a draper and weary of commercialism and what he called “business tricks,” Camille Corot (1796-1875) finally gained approval from his father to study as an artist. Although he trained in the Neoclassical tradition, in which the artistic aim is to represent an ideal of Beauty in nature, often sacrificing scientific accuracy in the effort, Corot quickly merged that approach with another, Realism. "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, and since then I have always treasured precision.”
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Quarry of the Chaise Marie at Fontainebleau (1830-1835) |
Early on, he began traveling widely to gather field studies for studio work. When he was 33, he arrived in Barbizon—an event that would win him fame as a member of the Barbizon School. There he discovered other artists painting Barbizon's Forest of Fontainebleau, including Daubigny, Rousseau and Millet. Although he worked hard and even showed in the annual Salon, critics were slow to praise his work, which varied from landscapes to nudes to scenes of Italian architecture. But the writer, Baudelaire, acclaimed Corot as the leader in the "modern school of landscape painting,” noting: "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." After the Revolution of 1848, Corot was admitted to the Salon jury, which was quite a boost after years of struggle.
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Fontainebleau, the Bas Breau Road (1830-1835) |
Over the years, many painters came to him for instruction, including Camille Pissaro, Eugène Boudin and Berthe Morisot. He also contributed to many charities for artists and their families. In 1872, he purchased a house for Honoré Daumier, who was blind and penniless. Not long after that, he gave 10,000 francs to the widow of Millet for the support of her children. Despite the successes which enabled this generosity, many of his fellow artists and collectors felt he had been neglected, and in 1874, one year before his death, they awarded him with a gold medal.
Corot is often considered a parent of Impressionism. Yet, unlike the Impressionists, Corot used more traditional, muted colors in his palette. And whereas the Impressionists focused more on color and light than on form, which resulted in “loose” brush strokes, Corot laid down the paint with careful placement and control. So what is it really that makes him one of Impressionism's progenitors? I think it was his attention to noting accurate color relationships in his landscapes, which allowed him to create a realistic sense of light and shadow. Despite their sloppy brush work, the Impressionists were all about these color relationships, and that is what they learned from Corot.
Now, here's one of my works, an oil-on-paper that has a peculiarly Corot feeling:
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| "Towering Cottonwood" 12x9, oil on paper Michael Chesley Johnson |
