DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63220#0037
COROT
of Daubigny and Decamps, the church at Rosny, and that of
Ville d’Avray. He would have liked to cover the walls of some
prison with his paintings. Said he : “I would have shown these
poor creatures the country in my own fashion, and I believe I
would have converted them to goodness by bringing them the
pure blue sky.”
In 1844 Corot returned to the Salon his Incendie de Sodome, which
was accepted, together with a couple of landscapes. In 1845 he
sent three pictures : Homere et les Bergers, Uaphnis et Chloe, and
a landscape. The “ Homer ” is now in the gallery of Saint Lo.
About this time Corot attempted etching by means of his Sou-
venir de Foscane, a plate signed simply with the initials “ C. C.”
This was retouched later, and reproduced in the “ Gazette des
Beaux Arts” of April 1, 1875.
A solitary picture of Corot’s figured in the annual exhibition
of 1846, two having been rejected. This was his Vue de la Foret de
Fontainebleau, which earned for the artist the Cross of the Legion of
Honour. This caused his father to remark : “ I think we must
give Camille a little more money.”
The following year he exhibited a Soir and a Berger jouant avec sa
Chevre. Gustave Blanche described the Soir as “ a pearl for which
there would be keen competition among amateurs.” Theophile
Gautier, on the other hand, while admiring the work, gave the
following erroneous analysis of Corot’s talent : “ It’s a strange
talent, that of M. Corot : he has the eye, without the hand ; he
sees like a consummate artist and paints like a child who has had a
brush put between his thumb and forefinger for the first time ; he
hardly knows how to hold the brush and apply the colour to the
canvas. Well ! even this doesn’t prevent M. Corot from being a
great landscapist : a love of Nature, a sense of poetry and artistic
intelligence make up for all this ; this bungler achieves astonishing
results, such as are never attained by the most consummate dexterity.
This thick, heavy touch, hesitating as it seems, obtains effects im-
possible to the facile brush which travels faster than the brain.”
Thore, in the “ Constitutionnel,” ranked the Soir above the Berger,
but he considered its execution “ embarrassed ” and its colouring
“ dull and ill-put-on.”
Although press and public alike were discussing Corot, his
pictures either did not sell at all, or fetched very low prices, as is
proved by the following letter addressed by the artist to a provincial
collector, M. Dutilleux, of Arras, who became a friend and in a way
a pupil :
c xvii
of Daubigny and Decamps, the church at Rosny, and that of
Ville d’Avray. He would have liked to cover the walls of some
prison with his paintings. Said he : “I would have shown these
poor creatures the country in my own fashion, and I believe I
would have converted them to goodness by bringing them the
pure blue sky.”
In 1844 Corot returned to the Salon his Incendie de Sodome, which
was accepted, together with a couple of landscapes. In 1845 he
sent three pictures : Homere et les Bergers, Uaphnis et Chloe, and
a landscape. The “ Homer ” is now in the gallery of Saint Lo.
About this time Corot attempted etching by means of his Sou-
venir de Foscane, a plate signed simply with the initials “ C. C.”
This was retouched later, and reproduced in the “ Gazette des
Beaux Arts” of April 1, 1875.
A solitary picture of Corot’s figured in the annual exhibition
of 1846, two having been rejected. This was his Vue de la Foret de
Fontainebleau, which earned for the artist the Cross of the Legion of
Honour. This caused his father to remark : “ I think we must
give Camille a little more money.”
The following year he exhibited a Soir and a Berger jouant avec sa
Chevre. Gustave Blanche described the Soir as “ a pearl for which
there would be keen competition among amateurs.” Theophile
Gautier, on the other hand, while admiring the work, gave the
following erroneous analysis of Corot’s talent : “ It’s a strange
talent, that of M. Corot : he has the eye, without the hand ; he
sees like a consummate artist and paints like a child who has had a
brush put between his thumb and forefinger for the first time ; he
hardly knows how to hold the brush and apply the colour to the
canvas. Well ! even this doesn’t prevent M. Corot from being a
great landscapist : a love of Nature, a sense of poetry and artistic
intelligence make up for all this ; this bungler achieves astonishing
results, such as are never attained by the most consummate dexterity.
This thick, heavy touch, hesitating as it seems, obtains effects im-
possible to the facile brush which travels faster than the brain.”
Thore, in the “ Constitutionnel,” ranked the Soir above the Berger,
but he considered its execution “ embarrassed ” and its colouring
“ dull and ill-put-on.”
Although press and public alike were discussing Corot, his
pictures either did not sell at all, or fetched very low prices, as is
proved by the following letter addressed by the artist to a provincial
collector, M. Dutilleux, of Arras, who became a friend and in a way
a pupil :
c xvii