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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 then distilled 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 Corot in the studio. Corot captured the essence of landscape by depicting in a single poetic whole his impression of a scene. Following neither the model of Rousseau's naturalistic style or Courbet's Realist landscapes, Corot preferred painting nature in a way which encouraged bucolic reverie.
The present work is a later variation of Corot’s painting, also called La solitude, which he exhibited hors concours at the Salon of 1866, and was ultimately acquired by Empress Eugénie (now in the collection of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). That painting is larger in scale than the present picture and also more melancholy in tone, having been painted only a few months after the death of Corot’s dear friend Constant Dutilleux. In the Salon version, Corot isolates the single female figure within the landscape; the buildings found in the present painting are not included, nor are the figures of any animals. Additionally in this earlier version, the figure rests her hand atop a lyre – connecting her to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and thus the feeling of pining for a loved one lost to death. The canvas is therefore imbued not only with a sense of isolation, but also one of melancholic longing.
By the time the present work was painted a year or two later (it is dated by Robaut to 1867-1868), Corot had turned away from the allegorical overtones of the earlier picture and returned again to pure landscape painting. Like the Salon version before it, this canvas does not illustrate a specific landscape, but rather the imagined landscape the artist composed based on his memories in his Paris studio. The mood has shifted notably, however. The warm pinks of a sunrise have touched the horizon and the edges of the clouds, and a more exuberant profusion of flowers and plants cover the grass between the viewer and the water’s edge. Perhaps most notably, the figure, once alone in the landscape with her lyre has been transformed into a shepherdess, watching a cow as it wades into the water. If the Salon version is Corot channeling a more Claudian approach to landscape, the present La solitude is Corot returning to the composition through his own distinctive voice as a landscape painter, demonstrating why the artist was at the height of both his popularity and his powers in the 1860s.
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 then distilled 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 Corot in the studio. Corot captured the essence of landscape by depicting in a single poetic whole his impression of a scene. Following neither the model of Rousseau's naturalistic style or Courbet's Realist landscapes, Corot preferred painting nature in a way which encouraged bucolic reverie.
The present work is a later variation of Corot’s painting, also called La solitude, which he exhibited hors concours at the Salon of 1866, and was ultimately acquired by Empress Eugénie (now in the collection of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). That painting is larger in scale than the present picture and also more melancholy in tone, having been painted only a few months after the death of Corot’s dear friend Constant Dutilleux. In the Salon version, Corot isolates the single female figure within the landscape; the buildings found in the present painting are not included, nor are the figures of any animals. Additionally in this earlier version, the figure rests her hand atop a lyre – connecting her to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and thus the feeling of pining for a loved one lost to death. The canvas is therefore imbued not only with a sense of isolation, but also one of melancholic longing.
By the time the present work was painted a year or two later (it is dated by Robaut to 1867-1868), Corot had turned away from the allegorical overtones of the earlier picture and returned again to pure landscape painting. Like the Salon version before it, this canvas does not illustrate a specific landscape, but rather the imagined landscape the artist composed based on his memories in his Paris studio. The mood has shifted notably, however. The warm pinks of a sunrise have touched the horizon and the edges of the clouds, and a more exuberant profusion of flowers and plants cover the grass between the viewer and the water’s edge. Perhaps most notably, the figure, once alone in the landscape with her lyre has been transformed into a shepherdess, watching a cow as it wades into the water. If the Salon version is Corot channeling a more Claudian approach to landscape, the present La solitude is Corot returning to the composition through his own distinctive voice as a landscape painter, demonstrating why the artist was at the height of both his popularity and his powers in the 1860s.