Unknown_Corot-2012

5 . Landscape, Civita Castellana , 1826 or 1827

Pen and brown ink over graphite on calque mounted to wove paper 19 × 13 1 ⁄ 8 inches ( 48 . 3 × 33 . 3 cm) Inscribed upper right: Civita Castellana

provenance Galerie de Bayser, Paris.

Among Corot’s excursions during his first trip to Rome were two visits to Civita Castellana—a rocky, partly wooded valley twenty-seven miles north of the capital. These extended campaigns resulted in many drawings and oil sketches which, as a group, help demonstrate the rapidity of Corot’s progress in Rome. During his first trip to Civita Castellana, from mid-May to mid-July of 1826 , Corot began to achieve a unified landscape image by simplifying his compositions and integrating his brushwork and penmarks into a consistent whole. By his second visit, in September and October of 1827 , Corot had mastered a drawing technique that allowed him to articulate forms and spatial relations not only through line, but through variations in tone as well (Galassi 1991 , pp. 176–178 ).

This drawing could belong to either the 1826 or 1827 campaign. A number of drawings in the Louvre that Corot dated 1827 , also executed in pen and brown ink over graphite,

represent a sous-bois motif at Civita Castellana not unlike that of this sheet (RF 8963 , 4026 , 3405 ). This drawing’s composition and degree of finish are especially comparable to one that Galassi tentatively dates 1827 (no. 250 , p. 196 ). A particularly accomplished sous bois oil study from one of these campaigns is Rocks by a Stream , Civita Castellana , Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill (RII, no. 176 ; Galassi, no. 246 , p. 194 ). These drawing and oil studies appear to orbit around a painting titled The Fisher of Crayfish that was probably completed in the studio, and which Galassi dates 1826–27 (no. 247 , p. 195 ). continued

Fisher of Crayfish, 1826–27 , Private Collection

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