Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Born in Paris in 1796, Camille Corot entered the studio of the painter Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822), the first to receive the Prix de Rome in the category of historical landscape, at the age of twenty-six. Landscapes were Corot’s subject of choice, and although he would occasionally include small figures to appease certain academic tastes for historic or allegorical themes, he preferred a genre that he descibed as souvenirs. Unlike works based on a specific location, these were more inventive and composed of standardized motifs like a lake, wooded clearing, or combination of natural elements drawn from his imagination rather than reality.

Corot’s travels to Italy between 1825 and 1828, in 1834, and in 1843 likely inspired this pastoral scene that verges on nostalgia.