Jean-Baptiste-Camille COROT (Paris 1796-1875) - Lot 119

Jean-Baptiste-Camille COROT (Paris 1796-1875) View of the Italian countryside Canvas. 36.5 x 52.5 cm Signed lower left Corot. Provenance : - Madeleine Lemaire Collection, Paris, in 1875; - Acquired in 1939 in Lille by the current owner's family. Bibliography: A. Robaut, L'oeuvre de Corot, catalog raisonné et illustré, Paris, 1905, vol. II, n°628, with a reproduction of a drawing by Robaut. Painted in the early 1840s, this painting is part of a pivotal decade in Corot's work. His style became simpler, influenced by Claude Lorrain and classical masters such as Poussin. During these years, Corot developed a more lyrical type of pastoral landscape, reflecting the condition of the soul. "No painter since Claude Lorrain has studied light with such fervor. M. Corot seeks not only the form, the line, in the anatomy of nature, but also the very life of the landscape, the attitudes of the trees, the different ways in which their leaves move, the brilliance of that golden evening light, the diversity and value of the tones in relation to one another. Without turning the landscape into a kind of architecture dominated by mystery, where the hand of man replaces that of God, he was able to strike a balance between the ideal, which is the painter's soul, and the reality that is nature" (Eugène Pelletan - La Presse - Salon 1841 - May 5, 1841). The painting features a sober, structured composition inspired by the Italian countryside.