Unknown_Corot-2012

2 . Tree Study , 1823

Graphite on paper 8 ¾ × 5 7 ⁄ 8

inches ( 22 . 2 × 14 . 9 cm) Signed, inscribed and dated: Corot Près St. Germain 1823

provenance Sotheby’s New York, April 23 , 2004 , lot 10 ; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2004 ).

Private Collection

This study of two trees, one in full leaf and the other mostly bare, is an example of Corot’s engagement with open-air subjects before his first trip to Italy. The drawing effectively captures two aspects of a tree’s form: its masses, articulated through the shading of the clumps of foliage, and the linear structure of its trunk and branches. It also documents Corot’s response to the lessons in landscape painting and drawing that he was learning during this era, first in the atelier of Michallon and, when this drawing was made, in the studio of Bertin. This training included both direct study from nature on site and the copying of paintings, drawings, and prints, particularly prints of trees. Bertin had his students copy engravings of trees from Alphonse-Nicolas Michel

Mandevare’s Principes raisonnés du paysage of 1804 , as well as from his own lithographs of trees, published for instruction between 1816 and 1824 . The schematic shapes of the leaves and regular hatching of the shaded foliage in Corot’s drawing are partly informed by these models, as are the treatment of the leaves as shaded masses and the trunk and branches as a kind of skeleton. But while Mandevare’s and Bertin’s detailed, dry renderings of trees are meant to clearly distinguish particular species, Corot’s drawings are more intent on capturing the trees as a complete motif, briskly apprehended and in the same spirit as his open-air oil sketches. In his immensely influential Elemens de perspective pratique à l’usage des artistes, suivis de reflexions et conseils à un élève sur la peinture et particulièrement sur le genre du paysage of 1800 , Pierre Henri de Valenciennes ( 1750–1819 ), Michallon’s teacher, advised the student of landscape painting to paint “ des maquettes

A.-N. Michel Mandevare, Principes raisonnés du paysage, 1804 , Musée du Louvre, Paris

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