Thursday, January 20, 2022

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (Persons and Places)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Interrupted Reading
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
The Student
ca. 1854
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Woman with a Pearl
ca. 1868-70
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Velléda
ca. 1868-70
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Portrait of Alexina Legoux
ca. 1835
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Italian Woman
ca. 1825-28
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Reading Monk
ca. 1840
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
View of the Roman Colosseum
from the Arcade of the Basilica of Constantine

1825
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
View of Genoa
1834
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
View of Florence from the Boboli Gardens
ca. 1835-40
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Volterra - The Citadel
1834
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ischia - View from the Slopes of Mount Epomeo
1828
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
La Cervara - Roman Campagna
1830-31
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Bridge of Narni near Rome
1826
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ponte Numentano - Roman Campagna
ca. 1825-28
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) – French painter, much admired for his landscape paintings but at heart a classicist.  His early work comprised mainly history subjects set in landscapes in the tradition of Poussin.  The works called 'studies' show remarkable powers of observation and organization, especially those done in Italy during 1825-8: they are mainly landscapes but also pictures of women in their regional costumes, dignified and calm.  He continued to produce history paintings for exhibition in the Salon but in 1838, after a second visit to Italy and travels in France, he also sent fully developed landscape paintings.  In 1843 he made a third trip to Italy.  Modest, generous, and sociable, Corot had many friends.  His character may have helped him gain the Légion d'Honneur in 1846 and to win the sympathy of the art critics Baudelaire and Champfleury.  Benefitting from the change of cultural tone occasioned by the 1848 revolution, he sent a landscape study of 1826 to the 1849 Salon as well as a religious painting.  Pissarro and Monet admired his exhibited work and his growing popularity helped to draw attention to naturalism.  He became a prominent member of the Salon jury and during the Franco-Prussian War donated a large sum for the defence of France.  He left Paris when the Commune took power and spent his remaining years wandering about France.

– excerpted from the Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000) by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton