Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in
Paris on July 16, 1796. His mother managed a fashionable dress shop in Paris on
the Rue du Bac and as a result he spent his first four years with a family near
I'sleAdam, and until 1807 lived in a pension on the Rue Vaugirard. He was sent
afterwards on scholarship to a school in Rouen, but did not adapt well to his
new environment, and in 1812, his parents decided it would be best for him to
return to Paris. When he finished his education in the village of Poissy, near
Paris, his father insisted that he venture into business, and though he had
expressed his desire to become an artist, Corot worked in several cloth merchant
shops from 1815 until 1822. In 1822, his parents finally agreed to support him
as an artist. Corot's first teacher was Achile Etna Michallon, a landscapist who
had studied in Rome. The time Corot spent with Michallon was brief, since
Michallon died later that same year. His influence, however, was immense, for it
was he who suggested to Corot to carefully study out-of-doors. Corot afterwards
studied with Jean Victor Bertin, who had also been Michallon's teacher. In 1817,
Corot's father bought a country home at Ville d'Avray, and the countryside
became a tremendous source of inspiration for the young artist. With the
financial support of his family, Corot traveled to Italy in 1825: his simple,
direct interpretations of what he saw caused a stir among his colleagues, who
included Leopold Robert, Schnetz and d'Aligny. Corot left Rome in 1826 and
traveled throughout much of Italy, returning to France in 1828, where he
maintained a rigorous schedule throughout his life. During the winters he worked
in his Paris studio, and devoted the summers to travel around France, recording
his experiences with nature. Essentially ignored in the 1830s, Corot won
important patrons and state commissions during the following ten years. In the
late 1840s and early 1850s he exhibited regularly and was a member of the Jury
in the Salon. His entries for the Salon generally included traditional subject
matter such as Biblical and mythological themes, although a few landscape
studies were also included. Following the death of his mother in 1851, Corot
accepted an invitation from Constant Dutilleux to recover from his loss. He went
to Arras and La Rochelle where he worked constantly. In 1851 and 1855 he
traveled to the Limousin, Switzerland and to Holland, attaining considerable
recognition during this period. One of his most important victories was in 1855
when he exhibited six paintings at the Universal Exhibition. The exhibition was
an enormous success and earned Corot his place among the Barbizon painters. The
public experienced an increased interest in his works during the late 1850s, and
in 1858, thirtyeight of his works were sold at the Hotel Drouot for a
considerable amount. Corot continued to exhibit at the Paris Salon until the end
of his life. He died in the Ville d'Avray on February 22, 1875, at the age of
seventynine. Corot, one of the foremost landscape artists of his time, is at
last recognized as one of the greatest painters of nature and of the human form,
and one of the most moving recorders of an artist's intimacy with his work.
Corot had the extraordinary skill of being able to delineate not just the
contours of objects, but the actual substance and luminosity. He was one of the
first painters to love and to paint nature for its own sake, and his landscapes
were surprisingly sensitive. He possessed a true quality of vision and expressed
a genuine poetic style in his work. Corot's paintings combined poetry, light and
color to reveal a clear and intense truth. He enlightened the realm of landscape
painting with a new naturalism, and a definite romanticism. Corot was a
revolutionary artist and a precursor to the art of the next generation.