Unknown_Corot-2012

23 . Moonlit Landscape , 1862

Charcoal, stumping, and scratching heightened with white on light brown paper 18 5 ⁄ 8 × 13 3 ⁄ 8 inches ( 47 . 3 × 33 . 9 cm) Signed and dated at bottom: 1862/ 1 Août/ Corot provenance Anonymous Sale, Berlin, October 29 , 1925 , lot 226 ; Sale, Christie’s New York, January 22 , 2003 , lot 113 ; Arturo Cuéllar and Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2003 ). This dramatic drawing, signed and dated by Corot in August of 1862 , was probably done at Ville d’Avray in the company of his sister and her husband. It is a variation on a compositional theme that Corot developed from the late 1840 s through the 1850 s and early 1860 s. The image is dominated by tall trees, framed in a vertical format that emphasizes the trees’ height and the graceful lines of the trunks. Simple masses of feathery foliage or silhouetted hills indicate fore-, mid- and background space, which the viewer traverses through Corot’s modulation of tone. The forms and atmosphere of Corot’s landscape emerge through a variety of marks and textures which hold our attention yet seem on the verge of fading, like ghosts, into an imaginary, ambiguous distance. The drawing is closely related to another sheet of nearly the same size, now in the Louvre, Le Sommeil de Diane of 1865 (Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 23334 ). Both are executed on tinted light brown paper, with stumping, scratching and white heightening, and depict a moonlit view through two trees in a vertical format with a small figure to one side. The Louvre sheet, according to Robaut’s inscription, is one of two ricordi that Corot made in July of 1865 , after two panel paintings that he completed that year to decorate the dining room of Prince Demidoff in Paris. The comparison demonstrates the degree to which Corot’s later practice used free improvisation with his media applied to a set of compositional themes, subjects, and formats. Private Collection

Le Sommeil de Diane, 1865 , Musée du Louvre, Paris