Unknown_Corot-2012

29 . Willow Grove , 1865–72

Charcoal and brown chalk heightened with white chalk on blue laid paper 10 7 ⁄ 8 × 17 ½ inches ( 27 . 5 × 44 . 5 cm) Estate sale stamp lower left: Lugt 460 a provenance Corot sale 1875 ; Purchased by Alfred Robaut; Vente Hurion, June 25 , 1927 , lot 20 v; Collection G. Petitdidier; Jill Newhouse ( 1989 ); Private Collection; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2006 ).

exhi b i t ions Copenhagen, n.d., loaned by G. Petitdidier. (Acc. to Robaut).

l i terature R IV, no. 3016 (illus.).

Private Collection

Corot’s late manner landscapes have sometimes been deemed repetitive as they place similar elements within a few basic compositional formats. The arrangement of this remarkable drawing is certainly familiar: an empty foreground that slopes quickly into the midground at either the left or right edge, nudging the viewer to enter the fictive space; great masses of billowing foliage that anchor the midground and are countered by a few wispy, fragile tree trunks with bare branches; geometric indications of ‘classical’ buildings in the background—either a dome or, in this case, a series of rectangles. Yet the drawing is a distinguished example of Corot’s achievement in charcoal and soft chalk. With just the barest suggestion of contours, shading, and a few discreetly placed lines, the masses of the image somehow cohere into a landscape and become the recognizable contents of a spatial field. At the same time, the landscape is forever on the verge of dissolving, just as miraculously, into pure medium, a fine powder of subtly vibrating lights and darks, an elegant silhouette on a flat sheet of heavy laid paper.