Canvas. 35⅝ × 46⅝ inches Dated 1838
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
Ville d’Avray
Gift of Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt
With clean, luminous colors Corot has shown a serene view near his summer home, at Ville d’Avray. His father had bought a house in this small village a few miles west of Paris, and Corot often returned to it throughout his long life. Painted when he was in his seventies, this picture seems to epitomize the development of Corot’s style. The simple buff and terra-cotta planes, which emphasize the cubic construction of the distant buildings, recall his early works, especially those painted in Italy between 1825 and 1828. After 1850 he evolved his most popular style, with its predominant silver-gray hues. Gentle, diffuse outdoor light gives harmony in these pictures to misty greens and watery blues, and the trees take on a feathery softness. A few touches of reddish hue complement the cool colors. All of these qualities are apparent in this late picture.
Corot conceived his paintings broadly in form and value. “I am never in a hurry to determine details,” he said; “the masses and general character of a picture concern me above all.” He also sought to preserve his emotions about nature: “What we feel is indeed real. Before a subject, we are moved by a certain elegant grace. Never lose sight of that in looking for exactness and detail.” The mood he suggests is a romantic reverie upon the subtle colors and serenity of nature.
Canvas. 19⅜ × 25⅝ inches Painted c. 1867-1870
Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Advice to a Young Artist
Gift of Duncan Phillips
Daumier’s broad planes of deep, vibrant color and his roughly applied highlights struck most of his contemporaries as preposterously crude. His paintings were astonishingly daring for an era which looked for meretricious fidelity to nature in its pictures. Few could grasp the significance of his simple, massive forms or understand how his profound human sympathy made these forms expressive symbols of emotion. In this picture a mood, sympathetic and quiet, is established between the young man and his master as they discuss a sketch selected from the big portfolio.
For the eye sensitive to color and value, there is a remarkable satisfaction in Daumier’s choice of hues. How deftly he contrasts the cool, shadowed paper in the old man’s hands with the warm white of the sheets below, yet how nicely distinguished the grayish paper is from the gray smock of the young man! These cool hues reappear, echoed in the background, to climax in the blue portfolio which rests against the red couch. The starkly simple, brown-clad old man stands out against the cool colors about him. On his face a few details, boldly indicated in dark lines and planes of light, strengthen the picture’s emotional content. Such a composition has qualities analogous to the majestic movements of a symphony.
