To these impressions of Rouen, Ville d’Avray, and Barbizon were added finally those of Paris. For Corot was born in Paris, and, often as he left it, he always came back; he passed the greatest part of his life there, and there it was, perhaps, that in his last period he created his most poetic works. In these years he had no more need of actual landscapes; he needed only a sky and they rose before him. Every evening after sundown he left his studio just at the time when the dusk fell veiling everything. He raised his eyes to the sky, the only part of nature which remained visible. And how often does this twilight sky of Paris recur in Corot’s pictures! At the end of his life he could really give himself over to a dream. The drawings and countless studies of his youth bear witness to the care, patience, and exactitude of his preparation. They gave him in after-years, when he was sure of his hand, the right to simplify, because he knew everything thoroughly. Thus Boecklin paints his pictures without a model, and thus Corot painted his landscapes. The hardest problems are solved apparently as if he were improvising; and for that very reason the sight of a Corot gives such unspeakable pleasure, such an impression of charming ease. It is only a hand which has used a brush for forty years that can paint thus. All effects are attained with the minimum expenditure of strength and material. The drawing lies as if behind colour that has been blown on to the canvas; it is as if one looked through a thin gauze into the distance. Whoever has studied reality so many years, with patient and observant eye, as Corot did, whoever has daily satiated his imagination with the impressions of nature, may finally venture on painting, not this or that scenery, but the fragrance, the very essence of things, and render merely his own spirit and his own visions free from all earthly and retarding accessories. There is a temptation to do honour to Corot’s pictures merely as “the confessions of a beautiful soul.”
| L’Art. |
| NARCISSE DIAZ. |
But Corot was as great and strong as a Hercules. In his blue blouse, with his woollen cap and the inevitable short Corot pipe in his mouth—a pipe which has become historical—one would have taken him for a carter rather than a celebrated painter. At the same time he remained during his whole life—a girl: twenty years senior to all the great landscape painters of the epoch, he was at once a patriarch in their eyes and their younger comrade. His long white hair surrounded the innocent face of a ruddy country girl, and his kind and pleasant eyes were those of a child listening to a fairy-tale. In 1848, during the fighting on the barricades, he asked with childish astonishment: “What is the matter? Are we not satisfied with the Government?” And during the war in 1870 this great hoary-headed child of seventy-four bought a musket, to join in fighting against Germany. Benevolence was the joy of his old age. Every friend who begged for a picture was given one, while for money he had the indifference of a hermit who has no wants and neither sows nor reaps, but is fed by his Heavenly Father. He ran breathlessly after an acquaintance to whom, contrary to his wont, he had refused five thousand francs: “Forgive me,” he said; “I am a miser, but there they are.” And when a picture-dealer brought him ten thousand francs he gave him the following direction: “Send them,” he said, “to the widow of my friend Millet; only, she must believe that you have bought pictures from him.” His one passion was music, his whole life “an eternal song.” Corot was a happy man, and no one more deserved to be happy. In his kind-hearted vivacity and even good spirits he was a favourite with all who came near him and called him familiarly their Papa Corot. Everything in him was healthy and natural; his was a harmonious nature, living and working happily. This harmony is reflected in his art. And he saw the joy in nature which he had in himself.
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| Gaz. des Beaux-Arts. | |
| DIAZ. | THE DESCENT OF THE BOHEMIANS. |
Everything that was coarse or horrible in nature he avoided, and his own life passed without romance or any terrible catastrophes. He has no picture in which there is a harassed tree vexed by the storm. Corot’s own spirit was touched neither by passions nor by the strokes of fate. There is air in his landscapes, but never storm; streams, but not torrents; waters, but not floods; plains, but not rugged mountains. All is soft and quiet as his own heart, whose peace the storm never troubled.
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| L’Art. | |||
| DIAZ. | AMONG THE FOLIAGE. | DIAZ. | A TREE TRUNK. |
No man ever lived a more orderly, regular, and reasonable life. He was only spendthrift where others were concerned. No evening passed that he did not play a rubber of whist with his mother, who died only a little before him, and was loved by the old man with the devoted tenderness of a child. From an early age he had the confirmed habits which make the day long and prevent waste of time. The eight years which he passed in the linen-drapery establishment of M. Delalain had accustomed him to punctuality. Every morning he rose very early, and at three minutes to eight he was in his studio as punctually as he had been in earlier years at the counter, and went through his daily task without feverish haste or idleness, humming with that quietude which makes the furthest progress.