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Lot Essay
'This is not a landscape painter, this is the very poet of the landscape, who breathes the sadnesses and joys of nature. The bond, the great bond that makes us the brothers of rooks and trees, he sees it; his figures, as poetic as his forests, are not strangers to the woodland that surrounds them. He knows more than anyone, he has discovered all the customs of boughs and leaves; and now that he is sure he will not distort their inner life, he can dispense with all servile imitation' (T. de Banville, 'Le Salon de 1861', Revue fantaisiste 2, 1 July 1861, pp. 235 - 36).
During the 1860s and 70s, Corot's vehicle for these sentiments expressed by de Banville were his so-called souvenir paintings, the remembrance of a particular place that the artist distilled in the studio into a ‘pure landscape’ inspired by his memories. Often started as a plein-air sketch on site, these souvenir paintings were then finished and sometimes reworked by the artist. Corot captured the essence of landscape by depicting in a single poetic whole his impression of a scene. These souvenir pictures are often bathed in a silvery light that seems to be the result of the artist filtering the images through his memory.
La cueillette au bord du chemin captures two figures foraging a wooded landscape. Running alongside the wood, a road stretches from the front of the picture plane toward an unidentified village in the distance, defining the center of the composition and leading the viewer back through the landscape. A perfect example of one of Corot’s souvenirs, the work has a distinguished provenance which reflects the artist’s enduring popularity among American collectors.
Before being brought to the US by M. Knoedler and Co. in 1893, the work was originally in the collection of John Saulnier, who owned a distinguished collection of works by Corot, many of which are now located in important museum collections. In 1895, the work was sold to Matthew C. D. Borden, the textile magnate called ‘the Calico King’ who owned the largest cloth printing company in the world at the time of his death. It was next in the collection of William Boyce Thompson, who made a fortune in mining and was an important 20th century philanthropist.
During the 1860s and 70s, Corot's vehicle for these sentiments expressed by de Banville were his so-called souvenir paintings, the remembrance of a particular place that the artist distilled in the studio into a ‘pure landscape’ inspired by his memories. Often started as a plein-air sketch on site, these souvenir paintings were then finished and sometimes reworked by the artist. Corot captured the essence of landscape by depicting in a single poetic whole his impression of a scene. These souvenir pictures are often bathed in a silvery light that seems to be the result of the artist filtering the images through his memory.
La cueillette au bord du chemin captures two figures foraging a wooded landscape. Running alongside the wood, a road stretches from the front of the picture plane toward an unidentified village in the distance, defining the center of the composition and leading the viewer back through the landscape. A perfect example of one of Corot’s souvenirs, the work has a distinguished provenance which reflects the artist’s enduring popularity among American collectors.
Before being brought to the US by M. Knoedler and Co. in 1893, the work was originally in the collection of John Saulnier, who owned a distinguished collection of works by Corot, many of which are now located in important museum collections. In 1895, the work was sold to Matthew C. D. Borden, the textile magnate called ‘the Calico King’ who owned the largest cloth printing company in the world at the time of his death. It was next in the collection of William Boyce Thompson, who made a fortune in mining and was an important 20th century philanthropist.