Macbeth, paysage (Macbeth, Landscape)

Begun in 1858, this ambitious representation of a scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth was exhibited in the Paris Salon the following year. It depicts the moment at which Macbeth and Banquo, generals of King Duncan, meet three witches who predict Macbeth’s rise to the throne of Scotland (Act 1, Scene 3). This, then, is one of only two Shakespearean subjects painted by Corot, the other being 'Hamlet and the Gravedigger' made some twenty years later and now in the Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenhagen.

The scene unfolds at the edge of a forest where Macbeth and Banquo are almost hidden in the shade; the figures of the three witches are silhouetted against the bright sky. Corot shows one of the witches pointing at the two men. The artist has taken a liberty here – Shakespeare’s text describes them putting their figures to their lips – that enabled him to visually connect the two figural groups. The hazy, atmospheric rendering of the landscape is typical for Corot's works from the mid-1850s.

The young Claude Monet greatly admired Corot's painting when he saw it at the Salon. Some fifty years later, when the Wallace Collection opened its doors to the public, this was one of the most popular works in the new museum.