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Lot Essay
Painted in December 1871, Le Vallon is a pure landscape, witnessing Corot's almost obstinate faith in nature's harmony in a time of intense political turmoil for France. According to Gary Tinterow, after the bloody conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War and Paris's surrender to the Prussians, Corot is depicting the ancestral soil of French countryside 'as if he meant to reassure the world of art in the face of national calamity... that all was well at Ville-d'Avray, all was well in his studio' (Corot, exh. cat., New York, 1996, p. 346).
During the last fifteen years of his life, from 1860 to 1875, Corot established himself as the 'very poet of landscape' (G. Tinterow, ibid, p. 259). These were the years of official recognition and public acclaim: the Emperor himself bought paintings by Corot on two occasions, giving one, La Solitude, to the Empress. None of the disappointments that had marked Corot's experiences at the Salons in the 1840s and 1850s were to sadden his later days: throughout most of the 1860s and 1870s he was either on the Jury of the Salon himself, or hors concours, automatically accepted. 'Salonistes' (reviewers of the Salons) wrote long eulogies about Corot 'the poet of landscape'. Young painters, among them Berthe Morisot, elicited his instruction and approval; Pissarro described himself as a pupil of Corot in the Salon brochures as a measure of respect... And, just as Blanc wrote, Corot was unexpectedly adopted by the proponents of the New Painting; Émile Zola, Théodore Duret, and Edmond Duranty, the key writers of the new school, considered Corot a progenitor of Impressionism. At one point or another in the course of the 1860s, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley each experimented with some of Corot's methods and techniques. Unexpectedly too, Corot, at the very end of his life, dabbled with the blond palette and motifs of modern life that had come to characterize the New Painting' (ibid, p. 260).
During the last fifteen years of his life, from 1860 to 1875, Corot established himself as the 'very poet of landscape' (G. Tinterow, ibid, p. 259). These were the years of official recognition and public acclaim: the Emperor himself bought paintings by Corot on two occasions, giving one, La Solitude, to the Empress. None of the disappointments that had marked Corot's experiences at the Salons in the 1840s and 1850s were to sadden his later days: throughout most of the 1860s and 1870s he was either on the Jury of the Salon himself, or hors concours, automatically accepted. 'Salonistes' (reviewers of the Salons) wrote long eulogies about Corot 'the poet of landscape'. Young painters, among them Berthe Morisot, elicited his instruction and approval; Pissarro described himself as a pupil of Corot in the Salon brochures as a measure of respect... And, just as Blanc wrote, Corot was unexpectedly adopted by the proponents of the New Painting; Émile Zola, Théodore Duret, and Edmond Duranty, the key writers of the new school, considered Corot a progenitor of Impressionism. At one point or another in the course of the 1860s, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley each experimented with some of Corot's methods and techniques. Unexpectedly too, Corot, at the very end of his life, dabbled with the blond palette and motifs of modern life that had come to characterize the New Painting' (ibid, p. 260).