DreamingofFrance

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot french, 1796-1865

Ville d’Avray – View of the Cabassud Houses from Corot’s Property

c. 1855 Oil on parqueted wood panel 10 5 ⁄ 8 x 15 ¼ inches ( 27 x 39 cm) provenance: Collection Alfred Robaut (d. 1909 ); Private Collection. literature:

Alfred Robaut. L’oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré , 2 nd ed. Vols. 1 – 5 . 1905 . Reprint, Paris: Léonce Laget, 1965 . vol II, no. 924 , p. 290 , illus. p. 291 ; Gary Tinterow, et al. Corot . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996 , p. 229 , fn. 8 (cited in entry for cat. 102 as a preliminary study for R 917 , now in the collection of the Des Moines Art Center). exhibition: Ville d’Avray, Musée de Ville d’Avray, France. Corot à Ville d’Avray . December 1987 . As Louis Guinon wrote in his Petite histoire de la maison de Corot, à Ville d’Avray (Paris, 1925 ), the Corot family property “near the streams of Ville d’Avray, shaded by splendid trees, had a primordial influence on the development of his talents.” Purchased by Corot’s father Louis-Jacques in 1817 for the sum of FF 25 , 000 , the house at # 5 , rue du Lac had two floors and a mansard attic. Corot’s room was on the second floor facing east over the lake. The village and its various landscape motifs provided a constant source of inspiration for Corot’s art throughout his career, and he returned over and