Unknown_Corot-2012

18 . Landscape with Figure , c. 1850

Charcoal and brown conte crayon on paper 6 7 ⁄ 8 × 12 inches ( 17 . 5 × 30 . 5 cm) Signed lower left

provenance Private Collection, United States, as of 1950 ; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 1999 ).

Private Collection

Corot’s characteristic ‘late manner’ emerges in both his painting and drawing around 1850 . The painting that seems most to announce the combination of misty, vaporous atmosphere and emphasis on tonal gradations rather than separate hues is the immensely successful Une matinée, La Danse des Nymphes (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) of the Salon of 1850–51 . The aims and methods of Corot’s drawing also changed in a number of ways during this period. Corot, along with other artists of this era, increasingly saw drawing as an opportunity for creating complete, ‘finished’ landscape compositions, rather than as part of a larger process of study and notation. This development was partly encouraged by changes in the market for landscape art, but for Corot in particular, drawing also provided a special opportunity to develop and explore certain aesthetic priorities that were of increasing importance to him. Corot addressed his motif in terms of form and what he constantly referred to as ‘value’— relative degrees of light and dark: “The first two things to study are the form, then the values. For me, those are the mainstays of art . . . ” (c. 1865–70 , R IV, no. 3118, in Carnet B, fol. 3 ). In the present sheet, Corot effectively articulates and unifies foreground, middle-ground and background through alternating bands of light and shadow, indicated by soft gradations of velvety charcoal. Charcoal and other soft media like conte, allowed Corot to blend, stump and merge forms into a harmonious unity of tone and medium. The contents of the drawing are typical of many of Corot’s later compositions in both drawing and painting. A small, single figure stands next to a windblown tree—both signs of solitude and reverie. The landscape is viewed at a distance and the space in the foreground is left empty. Corot has created a souvenir, or memory, of a landscape; no specific place is indicated and no point of scenic interest is described in detail.

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