Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Forest of Fontainebleau 1846 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Morning - The Dance of the Nymphs ca. 1850 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Gustave Courbet Rocks at Mouthier ca. 1855 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot The Seine at Chatou 1855 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
One evening, rose and mystic blue,
we shall exchange a single glance,
a long sigh heavy with farewells;
and then an Angel, unlocking doors,
will come, loyal and gay, to bring
the tarnished mirrors back to life.
Gustave Courbet Winter in the Jura 1857 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
Gustave Courbet Snow Effect in a Quarry 1870 oil on canvas Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Souvenir of Coubron 1872 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Ville d'Avray - Woodland path bordering the pond 1872 oil on canvas Indianapolis Museum of Art |
We long to journey without steam or sail!
Help us forget the prison of our days
and on the canvas of our minds unfurl
your visions framed by the horizon's gold.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Ruins of the Château de Pierrefonds ca. 1872 oil on canvas Cincinnati Art Museum |
Camille Pissarro Vegetable Garden 1878 oil on canvas Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo |
What greensickness could stand up to the sun,
that towering foster-father who dissolves
anxieties into air like morning mist,
ripening here a verse and there a rose
with honey on the tongue as in the hive?
Who but the sun persuades the lame to dance
as if their canes were maypoles, governing
the resurrection of the harrowed fields,
and for the secret harvest of the heart
commands immortal wheat to grow again!
Camille Pissarro Path to Les Pouilleux, Pontoise 1881 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Auguste Renoir Rocky Crags at L'Estaque 1882 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Camille Pissarro View from the artist's window, Eragny 1885 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Henri Rousseau Eiffel Tower ca. 1893 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
– stanzas and excerpts from Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Richard Howard (1982)