Corot

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Corot, by Sidney Allnutt
MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR EDITED BY . . T. LEMAN HARE
COROT
1796-1875
“Masterpieces in Colour” Series
Others in Preparation.
PLATE I.—DANSE DES BERGERS. Frontispiece
The “Danse des Bergers” is the living memorial of a happy mood—one of those moments of lyrical ecstasy of which Corot experienced so many, and which, by his genius, those less fortunate are enabled to share. The “feeling” in the drawing and painting of the trees is reminiscent of some words spoken by the painter when Paris was oppressing him—“I need living boughs. I want to see how the leaves of the willow grow from their branches. I am going to the country. When I bury my nose in a hazel-bush, I shall be fifteen years old. It is good; it breathes love!”
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.


The work of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot has been steadily rising in the estimation of the instructed ever since he won his first notable successes in 1840. During the greater part of the artist’s life-time the rise was very gradual, and he would have been astonished indeed if he could have known how rapid it was to be after his death. It is by no means only a rise in the selling prices of such of his works as come into the market—a Corot has something more than a collector’s value; but figures are in their way eloquent, and when we find a work (“Le Lac de Garde”) for which the painter was glad to get 800 francs selling for 231,000 francs within thirty years of his death, the rapid growth in the fame of the painter is materially evidenced.