Unknown_Corot-2012

20 . The Destruction of Sodom , c. 1857

Charcoal on light brown paper 10 ¼ × 17 inches ( 26 . 1 × 43 . 2 cm) Signed lower right

provenance Constant Dutilleux, Arras (from c. 1857 to before 1865 ); to Alfred Robaut, Arras; Private Collection, Paris; Sale, Christie’s London, July 8 , 2008 , lot 136 ; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2008 ).

l i terature R IV, no. 2909 , p. 1965 .

Private Collection

This vigorously handled charcoal drawing is described by Robaut as a souvenir of Corot’s Salon painting of 1857 , The Destruction of Sodom (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Robaut also notes that Corot executed the drawing while visiting his friend and acolyte, and Robaut’s father-in-law, the painter Dutilleux. The Destruction of Sodom seems to have held great importance to Corot. He first submitted a version of this painting under the title L’Incendie de Sodome to the Salon jury in 1843 but it was rejected. Subsequent protests from critics convinced the jury to accept the work for the 1844 exhibition, unchanged but with a new title , La Destruction de Sodome . An engraving published in L’Illustration in March of 1844 documents the first state of the painting. In the 1857 version of the painting, Corot has removed much of the upper sky and most of the landscape and city walls at the right and placed much greater emphasis on the foreground figures and their immediate surroundings. The angel leading Lot and his daughters has lost its wings; the arm of Lot’s wife is lowered, and a large, empty cistern provides an effective backdrop for the figures’ flight. This evident interest in the figure as a fulcrum for the content of the landscape is evident in Corot’s other submissions to the 1857 Salon, as well as in those to the 1859 Salon. The revised Destruction of Sodom conveys movement in a more effective, concentrated way, while the boldly gestural charcoal drawing captures with power and elegance this sense of cataclysmic change and dynamic movement. At least two other drawings by Corot are related to his 1857 Destruction of Sodom . One is found in a letter of March 1 , 1857 , to his young friend, the painter Edouard Brandon, then in Rome (Robaut I, p. 169 , illus.). The letter includes Corot’s sketches of several of the paintings that he planned to show at the Salon in June. In addition, Corot’s