Camille Corot
The poet of landscape.
Corot painted both crisp Italian sketches and, later, silvery, hazy, dreamlike landscapes. He was a model for the Impressionists.
Camille Corot was born in Paris in 1796. His parents ran a successful fashion shop, and he was meant to become a cloth merchant. Only at the age of 26 did his father give him a small annual allowance to devote himself to painting. He studied under the landscape painters Achille-Etna Michallon and Jean-Victor Bertin, who taught him to paint sketches outdoors.
From 1825 to 1828 Corot lived in Italy. There he painted small oil sketches in the clear light, with distinct forms and subtle nuances. A famous example is the sketch of The Bridge at Narni (1826) in the Louvre. He made two further journeys to Italy. He also painted in France, in the forest of Fontainebleau and at Ville-d'Avray outside Paris, where the family had a house. For many years he exhibited at the Salon without much success.
From the 1850s he changed his style and became very popular. He painted dreamy, poetic landscapes with feathery trees, misty lakes and small figures, in silver-grey and muted green tones. They were often called “souvenirs”. Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864) in the Louvre was bought by Emperor Napoleon III. Corot also painted figures, such as Woman with a Pearl in the Louvre, which is sometimes compared to the Mona Lisa.
Corot was known for his generosity. He never married and lived simply. He helped colleagues in need: among other things he arranged a house for the ageing and almost blind Honoré Daumier and supported Millet's widow. He encouraged younger painters such as Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.
Corot died in Paris in 1875. His popularity made him one of the most forged artists in history. An old joke says that he painted three thousand paintings, ten thousand of which are in the United States. His sketches from Italy and his feeling for light make him an important forerunner of Impressionism.