Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Recollection of Mortefontaine

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Recollection of Mortefontaine
1864
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

The Two Corots

After his Italian period, characterized by a warm and expansive technique, rendering atmospheres of clear unobstructed light that prefigured Cézanne, Corot, returning to France, found himself succumbing to an enchantment with mists.  

An Earlier Wind

Set against blocks of foliage reflected in a lake, two trees grow: at right, the larger which seems to have several trunks, or at least one larger and one smaller; and at left another, nearly leafless, whose trunk inclines along the same diagonal.  One speculates that they must have been bent over time by the same strong wind.  However, the rest of the picture fails to justify that speculation.  Clearly, it was an earlier wind.  In the mountains just in this way trees commonly are shaped by prevailing winds. 

At the instant captured by the painter, nothing belies the presence of any wind at all: the three figures, a young woman and two little girls, go about their business with notable tranquility.  The artist has succeeded in allying the evidence of past violence with a mood of serenity. 

Between Reality and Allegory   

The color palette inclines us to think this is an autumn evening.  The figures pursue a mysterious activity: the young woman seems to be cutting branches; she could alternatively be hanging an inscription or a small wreath.  The picture's title underlines this gentle hint of the funerary, the elegiac.  

This "recollection" of Mortefontaine might signify Corot's memory of passing such a spot, but also evoke an intimate ceremony of remembrance, as enacted by the protagonists.  Such an interpretation seems confirmed by the melancholy character of the landscape.  

Numerous works painted by Corot in this autumnal and misty period are inhabited by allegorical figures.  These canvases should not be read as simple realism – they also constitute allegories of memory.  Obviously the title plays an important role: the name "Mortefontaine" makes one think of a spring that has ceased to flow, of stagnant waters that cannot be reanimated. The gesture of hanging some object on the tree-trunk may be a way of transmitting a treasured memory to the children.  If this involves a memory belonging to Corot himself, he offers it to us in this allegorized fashion. 

– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)