Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925), Paris;

Private collection, passed down through descendants;

Where acquired by the present owner.

Paris, Galerie Schmidt, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot dans les collections privées: peintures-dessins, 24 April - 9 July 1996, no. 33.

A. Robaut, L’Oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré, vol. II, Paris 1965, pp. 312–313, cat. no. 1015, reproduced (Collection L. Lhermitte);

M.-J. Salmon, Vasques de Rome, Ombrages de Picardie: Hommage de l’Oise à Corot, exhibition catalogue, Beauvais 1987, pp. 74-75, note 18;

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot dans les collections privées: peintures-dessins, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1996, cat. no. 33, reproduced in color.

According to Alfred Robaut, the present work, showing Château-Thierry with the Marne in the foreground, was executed between 1855-1860. Corot created five comprehensive views of Château-Thierry, dated between 1855 and 1865 in the catalog raisonné. According to Marie-José Salmon, the present work was made at the base of the gas plant. According to Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Corot first stayed in this picturesque town on the Marne River, between Paris and Reims, in June 1856. In September 1856, Corot also visited his friend and favorite student, Eugène Lavieille (1820- 1889), who lived in La Ferté-Milon, about thirty kilometers from Château-Thierry, between 1855 and 1860.

Corot returned in 1863 for the wedding of one of his nephews, Jules Chamouillet, with Marie-Henriette Boujot-Vol, daughter of an old local family. He set up his easel on the castle's rampart path of the counts of Champagne the morning of the wedding and spent every subsequent morning there. He created his famous Vue des remparts de Château-Thierry (Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum). During this occasion, he impressed the young painter Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925), a native of Mont-Saint-Père, near Château-Thierry. Lhermitte was introduced to Corot by Madame Salleron-Charpentier, with whom Corot had stayed during the wedding, and she made him promise to return. He returned in the following years and created several paintings along the Marne and in the surrounding woods. According to Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Corot and Lhermitte's meeting happened as follows: "Behind Corot, painting at the foot of the castle of the counts of Champagne, near La Fontaine's house, a young man stopped. This meeting and friendship are significant for our painting, as it belonged to Léon Lhermitte when the catalog raisonné was published in 1905. It is highly likely that Corot gifted it to the young painter.