Artists

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot is considered one of the greatest nineteenth century French landscape artists. His work bridged the traditions of the Classical landscape painters and the first Impressionists in France. He possessed a strong foundation in traditional art education that is reflected throughout many of his works. This foundation, in combination with his passion and insight, enabled Corot to create successful paintings all throughout his career. He was inspired by generations of painters before him, including Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorraine. From these masters Corot acquired his sensitivity to light and balance in his compositions. He also inspired artists after him; not only the Impressionists, but also his contemporary Eugène Delacroix, who thought Corot was discovering new methods of painting nature. Corot portrayed an intense light and atmospheric weight in the scenes he chose to illuminate. He painted in the outdoors at his father's country house in Ville-d'Avray outside of Paris, working the paint on his palette to replicate the effects the sun had on the trees, hills, and buildings before him. This obsession with the effects of light, directly observed and translated into opaque pigment, was passed along to his younger contemporaries towards the end of his life. Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet all soaked in the lesson Corot offered on the magic sparkle of sunlight on their beloved French countryside, starting the next revolution in painting and affecting artists in the next generations.