Lot Essay
Throughout his career, Corot's paintings were distinguished by his unique sensibility to light. The present picture, with the refulgent illumination in the sky, sparkling highlights, and resplendent reflections off the grass, is a sublime example of the painter's incomparable talent. The quality of light in the present picture is similar to his nearly contemporary work, Paysage Moret (ex-coll. Paul Mellon; sold Christie's, New York, 15 November 1983).
The present picture depicts cattle and sheep grazing in a field near the village of Marcoussis, about 10 miles southwest of Paris. It is late spring or early summer--the time when Corot regularly traveled in France and abroad to paint en plein air. To judge from the light, it is late morning or early afternoon. Despite Corot's specificity in observation of the details, the overall impression the picture makes is one of timeless and poetic ideality. In the 1840s, at the time the present work was created, critics began to celebrate the Vergillian and pastoral elements in Corot's oeuvre. As Michael Pantazzi has commented:
Gautier is generally credited with having first compared his pictures with the bucolic Idyll" of Theocritus in 1844, but it was in fact Janin who drew the first parallel, in 1840... Thor made the same comment in 1844, and in the years that followed much was made of Corot's elegiac gifts. His paintings were perceived as visual expressions of Horace and Virgil. By the mid-1850s, he was seen as the quintessential painter of poetic landscapes, a poet who pursued, not visible form, but an idea (M. Pantazzi, "The Greatest Landscape Painter of Our Time," Corot, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, p. 148).
Painters agreed with the critics. Gauguin, for instance, wrote, "Corot loved to dream, and in front of his paintings, I dream as well" (quoted in J. Leighton, "After Corot," Corot, exh. cat., The South Bank Centre, London, 1992, p. 30); and van Gogh praised the "quietness, mystery and peace" of Corot's landscapes, and said, "in his works one feels Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, as well as the Gospels sometime, yet how discreet it is, and how much, all possible modern sensations, common to us all, predominate" (quoted in ibid.).
Paul Valry, the great poet and critic, said about Corot:
Nature was for Corot a model--but from several points of view.
First, it stood for the utmost precision with respect to light. . . He is, besides, one of those painters who studied the lie of the land most closely. Rock, sand, folds of terrain, . . . the continuous accidental sweep presented by natural formations, are for him objects of the first importance. . . Furthermore: for Corot, Nature, at her best, is both a model and an exemplar of the singular poetic value of certain harmonies between visible things. "Beauty" is one of the names for this universal yet accidental quality to be seen from a point of vantage. (P. Valry, Degas, Manet, Morisot, Princeton, 1960, p. 140)
James J. Hill bought this picture in 1897 from Samuel P. Avery, the chief American dealer in New York and Paris at that time. Hill was among the greatest collectors of Corot in the world, rivaled only by Etienne Moreau-Nelaton and Harry O. and Louisine Havemeyer.
Martin Dieterle has examined and confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
The present picture depicts cattle and sheep grazing in a field near the village of Marcoussis, about 10 miles southwest of Paris. It is late spring or early summer--the time when Corot regularly traveled in France and abroad to paint en plein air. To judge from the light, it is late morning or early afternoon. Despite Corot's specificity in observation of the details, the overall impression the picture makes is one of timeless and poetic ideality. In the 1840s, at the time the present work was created, critics began to celebrate the Vergillian and pastoral elements in Corot's oeuvre. As Michael Pantazzi has commented:
Gautier is generally credited with having first compared his pictures with the bucolic Idyll" of Theocritus in 1844, but it was in fact Janin who drew the first parallel, in 1840... Thor made the same comment in 1844, and in the years that followed much was made of Corot's elegiac gifts. His paintings were perceived as visual expressions of Horace and Virgil. By the mid-1850s, he was seen as the quintessential painter of poetic landscapes, a poet who pursued, not visible form, but an idea (M. Pantazzi, "The Greatest Landscape Painter of Our Time," Corot, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, p. 148).
Painters agreed with the critics. Gauguin, for instance, wrote, "Corot loved to dream, and in front of his paintings, I dream as well" (quoted in J. Leighton, "After Corot," Corot, exh. cat., The South Bank Centre, London, 1992, p. 30); and van Gogh praised the "quietness, mystery and peace" of Corot's landscapes, and said, "in his works one feels Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, as well as the Gospels sometime, yet how discreet it is, and how much, all possible modern sensations, common to us all, predominate" (quoted in ibid.).
Paul Valry, the great poet and critic, said about Corot:
Nature was for Corot a model--but from several points of view.
First, it stood for the utmost precision with respect to light. . . He is, besides, one of those painters who studied the lie of the land most closely. Rock, sand, folds of terrain, . . . the continuous accidental sweep presented by natural formations, are for him objects of the first importance. . . Furthermore: for Corot, Nature, at her best, is both a model and an exemplar of the singular poetic value of certain harmonies between visible things. "Beauty" is one of the names for this universal yet accidental quality to be seen from a point of vantage. (P. Valry, Degas, Manet, Morisot, Princeton, 1960, p. 140)
James J. Hill bought this picture in 1897 from Samuel P. Avery, the chief American dealer in New York and Paris at that time. Hill was among the greatest collectors of Corot in the world, rivaled only by Etienne Moreau-Nelaton and Harry O. and Louisine Havemeyer.
Martin Dieterle has examined and confirmed the authenticity of this painting.