Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)

Ville d'Avray, some ten miles from Paris, was to provide Corot with an important subject for his paintings throughout his career. Corot's father bought a country home in Ville d'Avray in 1817, and Corot never tired of painting this place which had meant so much to him as a youth. He was to record trees, ponds and rivers around Ville d'Avray up until the last months of his life. Corot's landscapes beginning in 1850 start to take on a silvery feather-like quality, a trait that would characterize all of his subsequent paintings.