As one of his friends said, Corot was “adorably good.” He was a good son, for all that he found himself unable to fall in with his father’s desire to make him a successful draper: and the fact that “at home” his outstanding abilities were never recognised, could not in the least abate the warmth of his family affections. And he was a good friend. He never forgot a kindness done to him either in word or deed, although his memory seemed to be singularly incapable of retaining a record of anything done to his hurt. It has been said, and the argument could be powerfully supported, that the same qualities that go to the making of a good friend make a bad enemy. Very likely it is true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred: if so the case of Corot was the hundredth. He seemed to have a natural incapacity to bear malice or retain a sense of injury. Perhaps he was too simple or too wise; or, maybe, both.
Not less characteristic of Corot than his manner of going about always with a song on his lips, was his incurable habit of giving. The wonder is that he ever had anything at all left for himself, that even shoes and soup did not follow after francs. And very reprehensibly, of course, he gave to almost every one who had recourse to him, as well as to many who did not. His generosity was all but indiscriminate, and conducted in a manner that, it may be supposed, would drive a charity organisation society to distraction. He was victimised often and knew it, but the knowledge never dulled the edge of an insatiable appetite. To give was at once a luxury and a necessity to him, as appears, and he was never so gay as when he had been indulging himself in this direction rather more recklessly than usual. “He would paint” (I quote from Meynell), “saying to himself, ‘Now I am making twice what I have just given.’ Or, again, having just emptied his cash drawer, he would take up his easel, saying: ‘Now we will paint great pictures. Now we will surprise the nations.’” Rather a foolish fellow evidently: but “one of God’s fools,” as I heard an old priest say of a somewhat similar example.
The “Vue du Colisée” is a reminiscence of Corot’s first visit to Rome. It plainly shows that even in those early days he had obtained a great mastery of his medium, and could set down with distinction what he so clearly saw. Though the subject is a big one, it is handled in such a fashion that simple dignity is its outstanding characteristic. The “Vue du Colisée” was one of the paintings that first gained for Corot the high consideration of the more discerning among his artist friends.
Notwithstanding the love that made the keynote of his character, all the investigations of the curious have not discovered an “affair of the heart” in Corot’s life story. It is a story to all intents and purposes without a woman in it: or, if that is saying too much, certainly without a heroine. There has been some attempt to exalt his relations with “Mademoiselle Rose” to the level of a romance, but it has failed completely for want of materials. Mademoiselle Rose was one of his mother’s work girls, and in those early days, when he was but newly emancipated from the bondage of drapery, she used to come to see him at his painter-work. She never married, and thirty-five years later Corot still counted her among his friends, and she visited him from time to time. It is a little romance of friendship, if you like, it may have been on the part of Mademoiselle Rose something more—who knows?—but it cannot count as a Corot love-affair on the evidence that is available.
As far as is known this is the nearest approach to a “love interest” in the life of the artist. It may have been that he looked upon women too much with the eye of an artist ever to be able to see them merely as a man; more probably it was the element of austerity in him that kept him immune from passion.
With all his intense delight in life and in living, Corot was always detached; always preserved, as by a religious habit, from actual contact with the world around him. Through the midst of the follies, the extravagances, and the vices of Romanticist circles in Paris of the thirties, he passed without coming to any harm, and characteristically enough, without losing his regard for some of the wildest of a wild company. He took part in much of the “fun” that was going on, but though often in the set he was never of it, and so far as can be judged it did not influence him, or colour his outlook upon life, in the slightest degree.
I think it was this temperamental detachment, and possibly a sense, unexpressed even to himself, of being vowed to one particular service, that prevented Corot from ever “falling in love,” as the phrase goes. Or, to put it another way, his life was so full of his art, that there was no room within its limits for another dominating interest.
Simple and single-minded, happily pursuing the occupation that of all others he would have chosen, he made his life a work of art more lovely than the most beautiful of his paintings. No one can live in such a world as this for the allotted span and more without becoming acquainted with grief, but Corot knew none of those searing sorrows which scorch their way into heart and brain, until they make existence a burden hardly to be borne. His faith in “the good God,” to whom he looked up with so childlike a confidence, was so complete that sorrow for him could hold no bitterness; nor, deeply sympathetic as he was, had it power over an impregnable content and an unfailing serenity.