Unknown_Corot-2012

8 . Ville d’Avray: Corot and His Family , c. 1830–35

Graphite on laid paper 8 ¼ x 7 ¼ inches ( 20 . 4 x 18 . 4 cm) Signed and inscribed lower right: Ville d’Avray

provenance Martin Reymert; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 1989 ).

Private Collection

This intriguing drawing is certainly a depiction of Corot sketching in the company of his immediate family: from the left, his sister, Annette-Octavie Sennegon ( 1793–1874 ), his mother, born Marie-Françoise Oberson ( 1769–1851 ), and his father, Louis-Jacques Corot ( 1771–1847 ). Corot, depicted behind and considerably smaller than his sister and parents, appears to be at work sketching the view before him. The four Corots are seated at the edge of their property, which Corot’s father had purchased in 1817 . This was next to the chemin de Corot , the road in Ville d’Avray that separated the family’s garden and house from the two ponds that the artist would paint constantly in his later years. Before the artist’s name came to be equated with the ponds of Ville d’Avray, Corot had frequently drawn and painted this very road from different angles, points of view, and in different manners. In many of these paintings, the point of view is in fact just around the spot where the seated figure of Corot looks and sketches in the present drawing. One such painting ( Ville d’Avray, c. 1820 s, Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 2640 ), shows the white buildings known as the Maisons Cabassud occupying most of the background, while the Corot property is hidden by foliage. A later painting ( Le Chemin de Corot , R II, no. 516 , c. 1849 , Private Collection) shows the same view when the road was graded, with the edge of the Corot house just peeking out from the trees.

To our knowledge, only one other work by Corot is known in which all four members of the immediate family appear together. This is in the decorative panels that Corot painted in 1847 , the year of his father’s death, for the kiosk in the garden at Ville d’Avray (R II, no. 600 ). Corot drew, but did not paint, portraits of his father. His painted portrait of his mother (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, NG 1852 ) has been dated 1833–35 on the basis of the sitter’s costume; Madame Corot

Ville d’Avray, c. 1820 s, Musée du Louvre, Paris