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

L'Étang à l'arbre penché was painted during the most creative and successful period in the artist's career. During this decade Corot perfected the misty, often idyllic pastoral landscapes for which he became so revered. Corot was considered to be the leading landscape painter of his time, and L'étang à l'arbre penché is an exquisite example not only of his innate ability to capture his local environs, but also his ability to translate onto his canvas the atmospheric effects of any given time of day.
Few artists could evoke twilight like Corot, and in L'Étang à l'arbre penché the artist once again proves to the world that he is the master of light, shadow and the sheer poetry of the landscape. Through the juxtaposition of the light in the evening sky, reflected with such dexterity in the surface of water in the lake, against the already darkened shadows of the trees and the landscape in the foreground, Corot captures the essence of the landscape at the close of the day. A woman seated at the edge of the lake, finished at last with her daily toil, serves as connection between the fading light of the evening sky and the darkness that brings peace and rest.

We are grateful to Martin Dieterle and Claire Lebeau for confirming the authenticity of this work.