Unknown_Corot-2012

often using tracing paper as the support (no. 5 ). A graphite drawing was often the first point of contact between Corot and the motif, although drawing was also part of a protracted process of observation, notation and revision, involving different media at different points in time. Some of the Rome drawings are preliminary studies for oil sketches, and may well have undergone further revision either when revisiting the motif—which Corot frequently did—or when returning to the studio. By the 1850 s, ideas about ambitious art and the importance of landscape painting were hotly disputed. Changing audiences, venues, techniques, markets and, just as important, new ways of seeing and enjoying nature would continue to transform French landscape painting through Impressionism. Among the changes was the increasing primacy of outdoor study for artists like Corot, Théodore Rousseau ( 1812–1867 ), and Charles-François Daubigny ( 1817–1878 ). Painting and drawing landscape outdoors was no longer a step along the way to the finished work, but gained enormous practical and symbolic importance as the very motivation for landscape representation. This was a form of art that demanded a “direct” encounter between artist and nature, beholder and landscape. Established techniques of classical landscape seemed increasingly stiff, tired, and “artificial;” but what methods of composing and modes of execution could capture nature more vividly, while having the weight and ambition of a complete, independent work of art? This generation of landscape painters offered various solutions at different times. One development that is easy for modern viewers to recognize, from a vantage point after Impressionism, was a looser handling of the brush and the instruments of drawing. Corot pushed this gestural, improvisational mode of execution further than his contemporaries, especially in drawing. The long, supple lines that indicate the direction of branches and tree trunks (nos. 18 , 25 , 26 , 28 ); the briskly applied straighter lines that reinforce contours (nos. 19 , 21 ); masses sometimes defined by smoothed, stumped passages of charcoal, sometimes through scribbling and scratching (nos. 23 , 26 ) were not just techniques of execution. For Corot’s admirers, this repertory of mark-making comprised a coherent “way of seeing” and of seizing nature through the artist’s eye and hand.