Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: 11 works

'Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot developed as a landscape painter by travelling and studying in Italy, and this work is said to depict the rolling countryside he witnessed outside Rome. Corot painted it as a companion to another Italian view, La Cervara, the Roman Campagna, and he designed the pair to evoke different times of day, weather, and emotional states.'

'This painting allows the viewer to share in Corot's first experience of Italy.'

'The fabrics trader Henry commissioned Corot to paint the view from his home and factory.'

'The town of Ville d'Avray, on the outskirts of Paris, was blessed with a wealth of natural beauty, and Corot painted its landscapes, with its forests and lakes, again and again throughout his career.'

'Corot based this painting on sketches made in the Forest of Fontainebleau, just south of Paris, where he had worked since the 1820s.'

'Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld looks forward to the artist's signature paintings, the Souvenirs and Memoires, in which Corot removes all narrative elements and lets his landscapes stand as "pure" objects.'

'This gently smiling young woman, although depicted as in the woods, was actually painted in Corot's studio, using a professional model whom he had had don the costume of an Italian peasant woman. Corot made three trips to Italy.'

'In his late career, Corot regularly painted "souvenirs" or memories of sites that he had visited earlier in his life. Around thirty (or one-fifth) of his exhibited works during the last twenty years of his life included the word "souvenir" in the title.'

'Corot first visited the Normandy coast in the early 1820s and often returned thereafter. Since he did not visit the coast in 1871, this must represent a memory of an earlier stay based on studies or simply on his recollections.'

'He was immersed in the venerable tradition of French artists in Rome who produced idealized views peopled with small biblical or classical figures, yet he also worked directly from nature. He became associated with the Barbizon School, named after a small village in the Forest of Fontainebleau about thirty miles southeast of Paris.'

'The Stonecutters featured in the posthumous retrospective of Corot's work held in 1875 in Paris----the first public homage to the fame of the deceased master----where it was purchased by a Parisian, Dr. Cambay.'