Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

(French, 1796–1875)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French artist known for his plein-air painting practice and influence on the Impressionist movement. Employing a silvery palette of mauve, grey, and ochre, the artist produced works depicting mythological, biblical, and rustic scenes developed from his outdoor studies. His interest in balance and precision in light and tonal gradations is evinced in the painting Island and Bridge of San Bartolomeo (c. 1825). “I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture,” he once said of his technique. “When these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color.” Born on July 17, 1796 in Paris, France, Corot traveled extensively throughout the French countryside producing sketches and studies of the landscape, but it was his early visits to paint ruins in Italy during the 1820s that solidified his style. Corot was taught by both Achille Etna Michallon and Jean-Victor Bertin, who were themselves both students of the famed landscape painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. He died on February 22, 1875 in Paris at the age of 78. In 2018, the artist’s Venise, vue du Quai des Esclavons (1845) was sold at Christie’s for $9,009,844, an auction record for Corot. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among others.