JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT (FRENCH, 1796-1875)

The landscape sketches executed on paper by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot during his first trip to Italy are considered of seminal importance in the development of French landscape painting, and marked the culmination of a tradition of working en plein-air begun some 30 years earlier by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in the Roman campagna. This body of work is considered the crucial link with the younger generation of artists who would go on to form the Barbizon School and, later, the Impressionist movement. Corot studied a wide range of natural and man-made motifs from advantageous points of view, and also paid particular attention to the qualities of light and atmosphere that bathed these well-known Italian subjects. Images of mountainous scenery with water streaming or tricking down stony peaks and collecting in pools near the foreground were a favourite theme, as seen in Corot’s studies of the waterfalls of Terni of 1826.

In the present study, the steeply rising mountain peak of the background is countered by the disarming tree study near the foreground, whose graceful trunk and leaves are sharply lit from the right. Throughout the work, masses of bright, vigorously brushed foliage play
against masses of cooler hues, while the densely layered, ascending mountain topography contrasts with the more open foreground which affords the beholder a place to stand and admire the scene. The compositional balance and pointed execution of this fresh, lively
work is in keeping with some of the more ‘finished’ studies that became part of Corot’s open-air repertoire during this remarkable period.