There are a number of explanations why Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot remained practically un­k­­­­n­own during his lifetime and why his reputation as one of the greatest French painters of the pre-Impressionist era exploded only some two decades after his death.

Corot never wanted to hold an exhibition of his works nor participate in the routine art exhibitions of his period. Art, he believed, was a very personal experience and a painter was not actually working to earn a living but going through the most exciting moments of his life. He also thought that once an artwork was complete, it was of little importance what others thought of it and what price it brought.

Born in 1796, in a well-to-do Parisian family in the affluent neighbourhood on the left bank of the River Seine, he was raised and educated to take over the family enterprise. After dutifully following the routine, he was able to convince his father that he would be happier being an artist than succeeding him as a businessman. That was the beginning of Corot’s astounding career at the age of 26.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot rejected fame and wealth, but deeply inspired the Impressionists

In his initial experiments, mainly devoted to black-and-white sketches and oil paintings on paper, Corot remained obsessed with the way light is reflected on lakes, trees and rocks in the valleys and transforms the vision as well as colours as it changes angles from sunrise to sunset. To capture this enchantment, he soon started travelling to a number of French countryside villages, such as Marlotte, Barbizon and Fontainebleau, to continue pursuing his cherished images.

The eagerly sought-after maturity in Corot’s work would finally arrive following his restless travels, not only to the Swiss mountainsides, French villages and seashores, but also to a number of sites in Italy during successive and prolonged stays from 1825 to 1843 that would include Rome, Naples and Venice.

In order to keep away from the limelight, Corot avoided artistic and professional circles and used members of his own family or his very close friends’ families as models.

In his dozens of studies one notices young, lonely women in deep reflection or themselves painting as artists. Nevertheless, despite strict precautions, his reputation as a brilliant painter soon became common knowledge. And, as of 1850, his works such as ‘Dance of the Nymphs’ and ‘Souvenir de Mortefontaine’ were much in demand, not only by art enthusiasts but also by art agents.

Under pressure, he finally agreed to show his paintings in a Paris exhibition and, soon after, in 1867 he was awarded the much coveted title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government.

Despite this unsolicited acclamation, Corot lived modestly in a small country house in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, not far from Paris, and kept giving away most of his earnings to the poor until his death in 1875.

His reputation exploded two decades later when the founder of the Impressionist movement, none else but Claude Monet, declared in 1897: “Corot is the only master here. We are nothing compared to him. Nothing!”

Monet’s comment gradually took a greater significance when many art historians in the 1930s would qualify Corot as the real precursor to Impressionism and the inventor of sunlit landscapes. Later, well-reputed personalities sush as the French art historian Germain Bazin and the British Museum director Kenneth Clark would define Corot as “a painter with an innocent eye who brought his visions of Nature to his canvas but at the same time kept his sentiments under highly disciplined control.”

Bazin qualified Corot’s celebrated painting ‘The Bridge at Narni’ as “a marvel of spontaneity in which there already exists a germ of Impressionism.”

Corot’s technique in the studies of sitting women also impressed Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh and Gauguin and they openly admitted being inspired by him in their own creations.

A great advantage of visiting the Corot exhibition is the fact that the Marmottan Museum contains the majority of Monet’s works in a permanent show; and one can easily see why Monet had qualified Corot as the genius behind the Impressionist movement.

“Corot, The Painter & His Models” is being held at the Musée Marmottan, Paris from February 8 to July 8, 2018

The writer is an art critic based in Paris ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 20th, 2018