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Lot Essay
As the title makes clear, like so many of Corot's late, poetic landscapes, this painting is a nostalgic hommage to the artist's trips to Italy, and the time he spent around Lake Nemi in the Roman campagna.
The painting combines both invented leitmotifs and topographically accurate elements. The former include the boatman with his signature red cap to animate the composition, the architectural capriccio in the background, and the overall composition dominated by a mass of trees in the foreground. But comparison with paintings of the subject executed 30 years earlier (fig. 1) show that Corot's painting is not wholly idealized. The trees are clearly derived from the sinuous, ancient boughs which did surround the lake, and fascinated generations of artists.
The composition is united by the gentle glow of slightly misty, silvery morning or evening light -- a characteristic which so defined the artist that it earned him praise and criticism in his own lifetime. The radical art critic, Théophile Thoré was torn between sensitivity to the artist's poetic vision, and a sense that it had become formulaic. He wrote of a larger rendition of this subject exhibited at the Salon of 1865: 'Corot almost never made anything besides the same one landscape, but it is good...Yes, truly, he has been to see the colour of the weather on the other side of the Alps: for he exhibted a Lac de Nemi and a splendid etching. What is odd is that he has brought back from the banks of the Tiber and Lake Nemi only his usual fog from the banks of the Seine. If he went to Constantinople, he would see the Bosphorus at high noon under a vaporous veil, in silvery tones.' Yet, his irony was softened by praise, for he continued: '...there is a delicious impression of morning and freshness. It's very poetic and very engaging...It's a matter of evoking in the viewer of these subtle images the feeling that he must be in the country, on a peaceful morning, at the shore of a lake. If Corot's painting makes you want to get up early, all is well.' (T. Thoré [W. Bürger] 'Salon de 1865' in Salons de W. Bürger, 1861 à 1868, vol. 2, Paris, 1870, pp. 223-224).
This painting will be included by Martin Dieterle and Claire Lebeau in the forthcoming sixth supplement to the Catalogue raisonné currently in preparation.
The painting combines both invented leitmotifs and topographically accurate elements. The former include the boatman with his signature red cap to animate the composition, the architectural capriccio in the background, and the overall composition dominated by a mass of trees in the foreground. But comparison with paintings of the subject executed 30 years earlier (fig. 1) show that Corot's painting is not wholly idealized. The trees are clearly derived from the sinuous, ancient boughs which did surround the lake, and fascinated generations of artists.
The composition is united by the gentle glow of slightly misty, silvery morning or evening light -- a characteristic which so defined the artist that it earned him praise and criticism in his own lifetime. The radical art critic, Théophile Thoré was torn between sensitivity to the artist's poetic vision, and a sense that it had become formulaic. He wrote of a larger rendition of this subject exhibited at the Salon of 1865: 'Corot almost never made anything besides the same one landscape, but it is good...Yes, truly, he has been to see the colour of the weather on the other side of the Alps: for he exhibted a Lac de Nemi and a splendid etching. What is odd is that he has brought back from the banks of the Tiber and Lake Nemi only his usual fog from the banks of the Seine. If he went to Constantinople, he would see the Bosphorus at high noon under a vaporous veil, in silvery tones.' Yet, his irony was softened by praise, for he continued: '...there is a delicious impression of morning and freshness. It's very poetic and very engaging...It's a matter of evoking in the viewer of these subtle images the feeling that he must be in the country, on a peaceful morning, at the shore of a lake. If Corot's painting makes you want to get up early, all is well.' (T. Thoré [W. Bürger] 'Salon de 1865' in Salons de W. Bürger, 1861 à 1868, vol. 2, Paris, 1870, pp. 223-224).
This painting will be included by Martin Dieterle and Claire Lebeau in the forthcoming sixth supplement to the Catalogue raisonné currently in preparation.