Paluds antiques

This painting bears all the strongest hallmarks of Corot's late period. It describes a shepherd overlooking a herd of cows grazing in marshland against the backdrop of an Italianate landscape. The shepherd's sheltered position under a tree, the birch tree on the left of the canvas threading its branches delicately skywards, the classical buildings and watery foreground are just some of the leitmotifs which define the artist in the popular imagination (fig. 1). Explicitly nostalgic, the painting harks back to Corot's memories of Italy and to a timeless, classical ideal which stretches back to the landscapes of Claude Lorrain. This is underscored by the title, which literally means 'ancient marshlands' in old French. The landscape is clearly imagined, although the buildings and marshlands bring to mind the Pontine landscape near Rome, softened by the lens of Corot's silvery brushwork.

Besides its natural poetry, this painting is elevated both by its particularly fine condition and a highly distinguished provenance. The painting was sold for the very large sum of 6,510 guineas in the three-day sale of Alexander Young's famous collection at Christie's in June 1910. Young had been one of the foremost English collectors of French 19th-century art of his day, whose collection included major works by Corot, and Barbizon painters such as Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau. The picture then passed, via the dealer Cremetti, to Sir John Reid, a leading Glasgow-based industrialist whose collection mirrored Young's tastes. It has remained in his family ever since.