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Lot Essay
Corot’s reputation as a landscape artist solidified around 1850 and he came to be regarded as a highly original interpreter of springtime in the French countryside. In a review of the Salon of 1850-51, the critic Auguste Desplaces was among the first to set forth an opinion that would hold true for the next quarter century: ‘M. Corot excels…in reproducing vegetation in its fresh beginnings, he marvelously renders the firstlings of the new world. Grass that has as yet felt only the warmth of May, the first new leaves just emerged from the bud, all that adolescence of newly green nature finds in M. Corot an innocent and well-informed interpreter. This is no academic tracing, no copy of earlier images: one sees a familiarity with and inspired knowledge of the subject’ (A. Desplaces, ‘Salon de 1850’, L’Union 17, 22 February 1851, pp. 119-122).
L’étang au chien is set in such a spring landscape. The mood is quiet, the landscape enshrouded in a pale, silvery light. The misty atmosphere created by the morning light is counterbalanced by the sturdy tree that anchors the right side of the composition. The leaves on the tree are pale green darkening to deeper tones typical of late spring. The water from the river has overflowed its banks from the melting of the winter snow and has created the étang, or marshy pool, in the center foreground.
Corot has adhered to the principles of planar recession that are so evident in his work from the mid-fifties through to the end of his artistic career: the foreground of the pond, dog and large tree transitions to the moving, grey-blue water of the river that defines the middle ground which in turn brings the viewer’s eye to the slight rise of land topped by architectural motifs in the background. The sky itself is a tour-de-force of color and light, with soft blues, greys, lavenders, yellow and white used to create the essence of a bright sky in mid-spring.
Corot has chosen to populate this work with the figure of a large dog, standing alone in the landscape, his head in the air as if searching out his master. Dogs are not common in Corot’s oeuvre, and when they do appear they are in the company of figures and most frequently in the more Neoclassical narrative works. This is the only work in Corot's recorded oeuvre where a dog replaces figures or other animals.
We are grateful to Claire Lebeau and Martin Dieterle for confirming the authenticity of this work.
L’étang au chien is set in such a spring landscape. The mood is quiet, the landscape enshrouded in a pale, silvery light. The misty atmosphere created by the morning light is counterbalanced by the sturdy tree that anchors the right side of the composition. The leaves on the tree are pale green darkening to deeper tones typical of late spring. The water from the river has overflowed its banks from the melting of the winter snow and has created the étang, or marshy pool, in the center foreground.
Corot has adhered to the principles of planar recession that are so evident in his work from the mid-fifties through to the end of his artistic career: the foreground of the pond, dog and large tree transitions to the moving, grey-blue water of the river that defines the middle ground which in turn brings the viewer’s eye to the slight rise of land topped by architectural motifs in the background. The sky itself is a tour-de-force of color and light, with soft blues, greys, lavenders, yellow and white used to create the essence of a bright sky in mid-spring.
Corot has chosen to populate this work with the figure of a large dog, standing alone in the landscape, his head in the air as if searching out his master. Dogs are not common in Corot’s oeuvre, and when they do appear they are in the company of figures and most frequently in the more Neoclassical narrative works. This is the only work in Corot's recorded oeuvre where a dog replaces figures or other animals.
We are grateful to Claire Lebeau and Martin Dieterle for confirming the authenticity of this work.