Lot Essay
Martin Dieterle has examined and confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
La Solitude. Souvenir de Vigen (Limousin) was one of the two large-scale landscapes that Corot sent to the Salon of 1866, the other being Le Soir (Robaut, no. 1637; location unknown). During this period, Corot's reputation as the most popular and successful landscape painter of his generation was firmly established, so much so that Napoleon III purchased La Solitude as a gift for the Empress for 1800 francs. This was the second painting by Corot to be added to Louis Napoleon's collection. Two years earlier, he paid 3000 francs for Souvenir de Mortefontaine from the 1864 Salon (Robaut, no. 1625, Muse du Louvre, Paris; fig. 1). In his review of the 1864 Salon, the art critic, Maxine du Camp wrote: "He [Corot] nevers copies nature, he dreams about it and reproduces what he sees in his reveries.... M. Corot has a remarkable quality that has eluded most of our artists today: he knows how to invent. His point of departure is always in nature; but when he arrives at the interpretation of it, he no longer copies, he remembers it, and immediately reaches an altitude that is higher and entirely purified" (Maxine du Camp, "Le Salon de 1864," Revue des deux mondes, 2nd. ser., 51, 1 June 1864, pp. 678-712).
How different Corot's approach to nature was from Thodore Rousseau's, whom he met for the first time in 1844, or to that of the other champion of the Realist landscape, Gustave Courbet, who painted side-by-side with Corot in Saintes in 1862. Unlike Rousseau and Courbet, who painted exactly what they observed in the everchanging landscape, Corot had a poetic vision of an Elysian world. The landscape settings in his paintings always remain the same regardless if the figures who populate them are real or fantastic. His young French peasant girls sit under the same trees as his nymphs and bacchantes. This is especially true of his landscapes from the 1860s and 1870s. Corot referred to these works as souvenirs, and used this title for about one fifth of his exhibited pictures between 1855 and 1874 (for a thorough discussion of Corot's souvenirs, and for souvenirs exhibited at the Salon during this period, see G. Tinterow, op. cit., p. 262). Corot's landscapes from the 1860s represent his remembrance or souvenirs of a location or setting, and as Gary Tinterow has aptly stated "are more often than not suffused with the silvery light that seems to result from the filtering of images through his memory" (G. Tinterow, ibid.).
La Solitude. Souvenir de Vigen (Limousin) may be categorized as this type of landscape painting by Corot. He depicts a young woman seated under a tree resting by a quiet pond. The ground is grass-covered and dotted with colorful flowers. She is surrounded on two sides with clusters of trees, heavy with foliage. Corot's trademark brushwork is evident everywhere--from the graceful lines of the trees, to the silvery touches of grey-green paint used for the leaves, to the tiny spots of colored paint in the grass, easily identifiable as field flowers such as wild poppies and buttercups.
La Solitude represented Corot's souvenir of the Limousin, but it is barely distinguishable from the setting of his 1864 Souvenir de Mortefontaine (fig. 1). It is almost as if the young woman reaching upwards in search of the flowers that wind around the tree has taken a walk to the other side of the lake to rest in the shade. Corot's souvenirs always represent his own personal recollections of the French countryside. In the case of La Solitude, he painted an earlier sketch in 1851 in Vigen that Robaut referred to as a study after nature (Robaut, no. 844). Certainly, Corot drew upon the earlier study when he conceived La Solitude in 1866, but the later work now becomes a stage for his own unique and poetic interpretation of nature.
Corot was labelled "the very poet of landscape" by Thodore de Banville in a Salon review of 1861 (T. de Banville, "Le Salon de 1861," Revue fantaisiste, 1 July 1861, pp. 222-236), an appropriate title for an artist who painted an Arcadian view of what he observed everywhere around him.
(fig. 1) J.-B.-C. Corot, Souvenir de Mortefontaine, 1864.
Muse du Louvre, Paris.
La Solitude. Souvenir de Vigen (Limousin) was one of the two large-scale landscapes that Corot sent to the Salon of 1866, the other being Le Soir (Robaut, no. 1637; location unknown). During this period, Corot's reputation as the most popular and successful landscape painter of his generation was firmly established, so much so that Napoleon III purchased La Solitude as a gift for the Empress for 1800 francs. This was the second painting by Corot to be added to Louis Napoleon's collection. Two years earlier, he paid 3000 francs for Souvenir de Mortefontaine from the 1864 Salon (Robaut, no. 1625, Muse du Louvre, Paris; fig. 1). In his review of the 1864 Salon, the art critic, Maxine du Camp wrote: "He [Corot] nevers copies nature, he dreams about it and reproduces what he sees in his reveries.... M. Corot has a remarkable quality that has eluded most of our artists today: he knows how to invent. His point of departure is always in nature; but when he arrives at the interpretation of it, he no longer copies, he remembers it, and immediately reaches an altitude that is higher and entirely purified" (Maxine du Camp, "Le Salon de 1864," Revue des deux mondes, 2nd. ser., 51, 1 June 1864, pp. 678-712).
How different Corot's approach to nature was from Thodore Rousseau's, whom he met for the first time in 1844, or to that of the other champion of the Realist landscape, Gustave Courbet, who painted side-by-side with Corot in Saintes in 1862. Unlike Rousseau and Courbet, who painted exactly what they observed in the everchanging landscape, Corot had a poetic vision of an Elysian world. The landscape settings in his paintings always remain the same regardless if the figures who populate them are real or fantastic. His young French peasant girls sit under the same trees as his nymphs and bacchantes. This is especially true of his landscapes from the 1860s and 1870s. Corot referred to these works as souvenirs, and used this title for about one fifth of his exhibited pictures between 1855 and 1874 (for a thorough discussion of Corot's souvenirs, and for souvenirs exhibited at the Salon during this period, see G. Tinterow, op. cit., p. 262). Corot's landscapes from the 1860s represent his remembrance or souvenirs of a location or setting, and as Gary Tinterow has aptly stated "are more often than not suffused with the silvery light that seems to result from the filtering of images through his memory" (G. Tinterow, ibid.).
La Solitude. Souvenir de Vigen (Limousin) may be categorized as this type of landscape painting by Corot. He depicts a young woman seated under a tree resting by a quiet pond. The ground is grass-covered and dotted with colorful flowers. She is surrounded on two sides with clusters of trees, heavy with foliage. Corot's trademark brushwork is evident everywhere--from the graceful lines of the trees, to the silvery touches of grey-green paint used for the leaves, to the tiny spots of colored paint in the grass, easily identifiable as field flowers such as wild poppies and buttercups.
La Solitude represented Corot's souvenir of the Limousin, but it is barely distinguishable from the setting of his 1864 Souvenir de Mortefontaine (fig. 1). It is almost as if the young woman reaching upwards in search of the flowers that wind around the tree has taken a walk to the other side of the lake to rest in the shade. Corot's souvenirs always represent his own personal recollections of the French countryside. In the case of La Solitude, he painted an earlier sketch in 1851 in Vigen that Robaut referred to as a study after nature (Robaut, no. 844). Certainly, Corot drew upon the earlier study when he conceived La Solitude in 1866, but the later work now becomes a stage for his own unique and poetic interpretation of nature.
Corot was labelled "the very poet of landscape" by Thodore de Banville in a Salon review of 1861 (T. de Banville, "Le Salon de 1861," Revue fantaisiste, 1 July 1861, pp. 222-236), an appropriate title for an artist who painted an Arcadian view of what he observed everywhere around him.
(fig. 1) J.-B.-C. Corot, Souvenir de Mortefontaine, 1864.
Muse du Louvre, Paris.