Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Berthelier Collection, Paris
Sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 9, 1889, lot 18
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Samuel P. Avery, New York
James J. Hill, St. Paul, Minnesota (acquired from the above, November 12, 1897, thence by descent and sold, Christie's New York, May 5, 1998, lot 7)
Acquired at the above sale

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, James J. Hill Collection, 1918, no. 40
San Francisco, California Palace Legion of Honor; Toledo Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Barbizon Revisited, September 1962-April 1963, p. 87, no. 8, illustrated p. 95

A. Robaut, L'Oeuvre de Corot, Catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris, 1965, vol. II, p. 186, no. 510, illustrated p. 187

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This wonderful work is in lovely condition. The canvas has an old lining. The texture is good. The paint layer is quite thick. Some cracking has developed in the green meadow, which has received a few retouches. There is an area to the right of the large cow in the lower left that has received retouching. This might correspond to a small pentiment; there does not appear to be any actual paint loss here. The trees and sky show no retouches. The work should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Examining Corot’s long career reveals a deep well of artistic invention. As the most successful landscape painter of his generation, his style changed dramatically over the course of decades. He is remembered for his plein air studies of Italy from the 1820s, his traditional Salon submissions from the 1850s and the silvery souvenirs of the 1860s and 1870s. The period from the early 1830s until the late 1840s is not as well documented, and yet this twenty year span included many of Corot’s most beautiful and innovative compositions.

Corot visited Marcoussis, a village thirty kilometers south of Paris, on a number of occasions to visit his friend and fellow artist, Ernest Dumax, and to paint the surrounding landscape. Alfred Robaut suggests that the date for the present work is between 1845 and 1850, and his 1855 Salon submission, Souvenir de Marcoussis, près Montlhéry (circa 1855, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, acquired by Napoleon III) supports that Corot would have been there at this time. It is impossible to determine if Corot’s composition was painted en plein air or if his memory of the landscape was so vivid that he was able to reconstruct this spectacular sylvan landscape back in his Paris studio.

This particular canvas reveals Corot’s strength as a colorist, with chromatic greens zig-zagging across the foreground and carrying the viewer’s gaze from one side of the expanse to the other, and back through the opening of trees to reveal the hazy, faraway vista. The blue light of early summer is reflected on the grass and pierces through the indigo-shadowed thicket of trees to illuminate patches of the forest floor. The bright sunlight casts shadows under the cows and sheep who pasture in the meadow, while a single shepherd stands near the center of the scene and serves to anchor the entire composition.

Many great nineteenth century European paintings came to America through the influential New York art agent, Samuel P. Avery (see lots 4 and 8), and in 1897 he sold the present work to James J. Hill, founder of the American Transcontinental Railroad Network and whose collection of Corots was rivalled only by Harry Osborne and Louisine Havemeyer and the artist’s biographer, Étienne Moreau-Nélaton.