A BROOK IN THE DEPARTMENT OF VAR, FRANCE. FROM A PAINTING BY HENRI HARPIGNIES.
In the galleries of the Luxembourg, Paris. First exhibited at the Salon of 1888.
A CENTURY OF PAINTING.
NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.—COROT AND THE MODERN PASTORAL.—THE MEN OF 1830.—ROUSSEAU, DIAZ, DUPRÉ, AND DAUBIGNY.—FOUR FIGURE PAINTERS OF DIFFERING AIMS.
By Will H. Low.
ICTURES?" boasted Turner. "Give me canvas, colors, a room to work in, with a door that will lock, and it is not difficult to paint pictures!" This was the spirit of the older men, against which Constable rose in his might. It was the legacy of the past; the principle, or the lack of it, which permitted Titian (in a picture now in the National Gallery, London) to paint the shadows of his figures falling away from the spectator into the picture, and towards the setting sun in the background. The return to nature, however, was not accomplished at once. It is doubtful, indeed, if a painter can ever arrive at a respectable technical achievement without imbibing certain conventions which prevent complete submission to nature; absolute naïveté thus becoming only theoretically possible. Constable, with all his independence, dared not throw over all received canons of art. And Géricault, while daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more to embody it in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to place on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily marked shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen under the far-reaching arch of the sky, but fell from a studio window. Nor do the early pictures by Corot free themselves from the influences of the academy at once. In the studies which he bequeathed to the Louvre—two tiny canvases on which are depicted the Coliseum and the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome—the conventional picking out of detail, the painting of separate objects by themselves, without due relation to each other, is the effect of early study; and it is only in the as yet timid reaching for effect of light and atmosphere that we feel the Corot of the future. These studies were painted in 1826; and as late as 1835 the same influences are manifest in the "Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert," a historical landscape of the kind dear to the academies, but saved and made of interest by the native qualities of the painter struggling to the surface.
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in Paris, July 28, 1796. His father was originally a barber; but, marrying a dressmaker, he joined forces with his wife to such effect that they became the fashionable house of their time; and a "dress from Corot's" found its place in the comedies of the early part of the century, very much as the name of Worth has been potent in later days. The youth's distaste for business (certain unfortunate experiences in selling olive-colored cloth leading directly thereto) at length vanquished the parents' opposition to his choice of a career; and after a solemn family conclave, it was decided that he was to have an allowance of three hundred dollars a year, and be free to follow his own inclinations. Procuring materials for work, Corot sat him down the same day on the bank of the Seine, almost under the windows of his father's shop, and began to paint. It is prettily related that one of the shop-women, Mademoiselle Rose by name, was the only person of his entourage who sympathized with the young fellow, and who came to look at his work to encourage him. Late in life the good Corot said: "Look at my first study; the colors are still bright, the hour and day remain fixed on the canvas; and only the other day Mademoiselle Rose came to see me; and, alas, the old maid and the old man, how faded they are!"
