For five-and-twenty years it was permitted to him to labour in perfect ripeness, freedom, and artistic independence. One thinks of Corot as though he had been a child until he was fifty and then first entered upon his adolescence. Up to 1846 he took from his father the yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs given him as a student, and in that year, when he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour, M. Corot doubled the sum for the future, observing: “Well, Camille seems to have talent after all.” About the same time his friends remarked that he went about Barbizon one day more meditatively than usual. “My dear fellow,” said he to one of them, “I am inconsolable. Till now I had a complete collection of Corots, and it has been broken to-day, for I have sold one for the first time.” And even at seventy-four he said: “How swiftly one’s life passes, and how much must one exert one’s self to do anything good!” The history of art has few examples to offer of so long a spring. Corot had the privilege of never growing old; his life was a continual rejuvenescence. The works which made him Corot are the youthful works of an old man, the matured creations of a grey-headed artist, who—like Titian—remained for ever young; and for their artistic appreciation it is not without importance to remember this.

Baschet.
DUPRÉ.SUNSET.
(By permission of M. Jules Beer, the owner of the picture.)

Of all the Fontainebleau painters Corot was the least a realist: he was the least bound to the earth, and he was never bent upon any exact rendering of a part of nature. No doubt he worked much in the open air, but he worked far more in his studio; he painted many scenes as they lay before him, but more often those which he only saw in his own mind. He is reported to have said on his deathbed: “Last night I saw in a dream a landscape with a sky all rosy. It was charming, and still stands before me quite distinctly; it will be marvellous to paint.” How many landscapes may he not have thus dreamed, and painted from the recollected vision!

L’Art.
DUPRÉ.THE HAY-WAIN.

For a young man this would be a very dangerous method. For Corot it was the only one which allowed him to remain Corot, because in this way no unnecessary detail disturbed the pure, poetic reverie. He had spent his whole life in a dallying courtship with nature, ever renewed. As a child he looked down from his attic window upon the wavering mists of the Seine; as a schoolboy in Rouen he wandered lost in his own fancies along the borders of the great river; when he had grown older he went every year with his sister to a little country-house in Ville d’Avray, which his father had bought for him in 1817. Here he stood at the open window, in the depth of the night, when every one was asleep, absorbed in looking at the sky and listening to the plash of waters and the rustling of leaves. Here he stayed quite alone. No sound disturbed his reveries, and unconsciously he drank in the soft, moist air and the delicate vapour rising from the neighbouring river. Everything was harmoniously reflected in his quick and eager spirit, and his eyes beheld the individual trait of nature floating in the universal life. He began not merely to see nature, but to feel her presence, like that of a beloved woman, to receive her very breath and to hear the beating of her heart.

Baschet.
DUPRÉ.   THE OLD OAK.

One knows the marvellous letter in which he describes the day of a landscape painter to Jules Dupré: “On se lève de bonne heure, à trois heures du matin, avant le soleil; on va s’asseoir au pied d’un arbre, on regarde et on attend. On ne voit pas grand’chose d’abord. La nature ressemble à une toile blanchâtre où s’esquissent à peine les profils de quelques masses: tout est embaumé, tout frisonne au souffle fraîchi de l’aube. Bing! le soleil s’éclaircit ... le soleil n’a pas encore déchiré la gaze derrière laquelle se cachent la prairie, le vallon, les collines de l’horizon.... Les vapeurs nocturnes rampent encore commes des flocons argentés sur les herbes d’un vert transi. Bing!... Bing!... un premier rayon de soleil ... un second rayon de soleil.... Les petites fleurettes semblent s’éveiller joyeuses.... Elles out toutes leur goutte de rosée qui tremble ... les feuilles frileuses s’agitent au souffle du matin ... dans la feuillée, les oiseaux invisibles chantent.... Il semble que ce sont les fleurs qui font la prière. Les Amours à ailes de papillons s’ébattent sur la prairie et font onduler les hautes herbes.... On ne voit rien ... tout y est. Le paysage est tout entier derrière la gaze transparente du brouillard, qui, au reste ... monte ... monte ... aspiré par le soleil ... et laisse, en se levant, voir la rivière lamée d’argent, les prés, les arbres, les maisonettes, le lointain fuyant.... On distingue enfin tout ce que l’on divinait d’abord.”

At the end there is an ode to evening which is perhaps to be reckoned amongst the most delicate pages of French lyrics: “La nature s’assoupit ... cependant l’air frais du soir soupire dans les feuilles ... la rosée emperle le velours des gazons.... Les nymphes fuient ... se cachent ... et désirent être vues.... Bing! une étoile du ciel qui pique une tête dans l’étang.... Charmante étoile, dont le frémissement de l’eau augmente le scintillement, tu me regardes ... tu me souris en clignant de l’œil.... Bing! une seconde étoile apparaît dans l’eau; un second œil s’ouvre. Soyez les bienvenues, fraîches et charmantes étoiles.... Bing! Bing! Bing! trois, six, vingt étoiles.... Toutes les étoiles du ciel se sont donné rendez-vous dans cet heureux étang.... Tout s’assombrit encore.... L’étang seul scintille.... C’est un fourmillement d’étoiles.... L’illusion se produit.... Le soleil étant couché, le soleil intérieur de l’âme, le soleil de l’art se lève.... Bon! voilâ mon tableau fait.”

DUPRÉ.THE POOL.

Any one who has never read anything about Corot except these lines may know him through them alone. Even that little word “Bing” comprises and elucidates his art by its clear, silvery resonance. The words vibrate like the strings of a violin that have been gently touched, and they want Mozart’s music as an accompaniment. I do not know any one who has described all the feminine tenderness of nature, the dishevelled leaves of the birches, the heaving bosom of the air, the fresh virginity of morning, the weary, sensuous charm of evening, with such seductive tenderness and such highly strung feeling, so voluptuously and yet so coyly.