La dune de Dunkerque

Details

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
La dune de Dunkerque
signed 'COROT' (lower left)
oil on cradeled panel
13 5/8 x 26½ in. (37.1 x 66.7 cm.)
Painted in 1873

Provenance

Verdier et Hoschedé; sale, 1875, lot 12.
M. Martin-Leroy (acquired at the above sale).
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York.
Wildenstein & Co., New York.
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners, 1967.

Literature

L'Art, 13 June 1875 (a drawing of the painting illustrated).
R. Miles, Corot, 1883.
A. Robaut, L'oeuvre de Corot, Catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris, 1965, vol. 3, p. 284, no. 2121 (illustrated, p. 285).

Exhibited

Paris, Exposition à l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1875, no. 73.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpieces from Private Collections in Chicago, July-August 1969 (titled Sand Dunes at Dunkirk).

Sale room notice

Martin Dieterle has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
Please note the correct provenance is:
Verdier et Hoschedé; sale, 1875, lot 12.
M. Martin-Leroy (acquired at the above sale).
Mr. Ch. L. Atterbury.
Wildenstein & Co., New York.
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners, 1967.

Lot Essay

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot traveled to Dunkirk at the end of July 1873 to paint with his friend, Charles-François Daubigny. It was Corot's second visit to the area, having been there sixteen years prior in September 1857. Situated in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region of France, near the border with Belgium, Dunkirk, with its old port, structural ramparts, and surrounding dunes, provided Corot with ample motifs for his painting. Of the six paintings of Dunkirk recorded in Alfred Robaut's Corot catalogue raisonné, the present painting is the largest and the only one in which reference to the town is completely abandoned. The absence of architectural elements allowed Corot to focus solely on the effects of light as it played across the stark dune landscape. Working en plein air, he rendered this topography in a harmony of beiges and greens which he punctuated with the presence of human figures to provide accents of color.

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