It has been noted that most great landscape painters have been city-bred, a remarkable fact. Constable and Gainsborough were born and bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. Corot's parents were Parisians of the purest dye, having been court-dressmakers to Napoleon I.; and when Corot finally determined to leave the draper's shop and become a painter, his father said: "You shall have a yearly allowance of 1,200 francs, and if you can live on that, you can do as you please." When his son was made a member of the Legion of Honour, after twenty-three years of earnest work, his father thought the matter over, and presently doubled the allowance, "for Camille seems to have some talent after all," he remarked as an excuse for his generosity.
It is told that when he first went to study in Italy, Corot longed to transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. So he reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, which he did so exquisitely.
One learns something of this painter of early dawn and soft evening from a letter he wrote to his friend Dupré:
One gets up at three in the morning, before the sun; one goes and sits at the foot of a tree; one watches and waits. One sees nothing much at first. Nature resembles a whitish canvas on which are sketched scarcely the profiles of some masses; everything is perfumed, and shines in the fresh breath of dawn. Bing! the sun grows bright but has not yet torn aside the veil behind which lie concealed the meadows, the dale, and hills of the horizon. The vapours of night still creep, like silvery flakes over the numbed-green vegetation. Bing! bing!--a first ray of sunlight--a second ray of sunlight--the little flowers seem to wake up joyously. They all have their drop of dew which trembles--the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning--in the foliage the birds sing unseen--all the flowers seem to be saying their prayers. Loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and make the tall plants wave--one sees nothing--yet everything is there--the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the river, plated with silver, the meadow, the trees, cottages, the receding distance--one distinguishes at last everything that one had divined at first.
In all the world there can hardly be a more exquisite story of daybreak than this; and so beautiful was the mood into which Corot fell at eventime, as he himself describes it, that it would be a mistake to leave it out. This is his story of the night:
Nature drowses--the fresh air, however, sighs among the leaves--the dew decks the velvety grass with pearls. The nymphs fly--hide themselves--and desire to be seen. Bing! a star in the sky which pricks its image on the pool. Charming star--whose brilliance is increased by the quivering of the water, thou watchest me--thou smilest to me with half-closed eye! Bing!--a second star appears in the water, a second eye opens. Be the harbingers of welcome, fresh and charming stars. Bing! Bing! Bing!--three, six, twenty stars. All the stars in the sky are keeping tryst in this happy pool. Everything darkens, the pool alone sparkles. There is a swarm of stars--all yields to illusion. The sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the soul, the sun of art awakens. Bon! there is my picture done!
In writing those letters, Corot made literature as well as pictures. That little word "bing!" appears also in his paintings, as little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which, high-lightened, accents the whole.
PLATE--DANCE OF THE NYMPHS
There could hardly be a more charming painting than this which hangs in the Louvre. It is of a half-shut-in landscape of tall trees, their branches mingling; and all the atmospheric effects that belong to Corot's work can here be seen.
On the open greensward is a group of nymphs dancing gaily, while over all the scene is the veil of fairy-land or of something quite mysterious. At the back and side, satyrs can be seen watching the nymphs. There is here less of the blur of leaves than that seen in later pictures, but the same soft effect is found, and the little "bings" are the accents of light placed upon a leaf, a nymph's shoulder, or a tree-trunk.