Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)

Etude de Paysage - Souvenir d'Italie

Details
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)
Etude de Paysage - Souvenir d'Italie
signed 'Corot' (lower left)
oil on canvas
11 x 8¾ in. (27.9 x 22.3 cm.)
Painted circa 1865
Provenance
Alexander Young; his posthumous sale, Christie's London, 30 June 1910, lot 47.
Miss Margaret S. Davies, Newtown, Montgomeryshire ('Corot. Landscape. M. S. D.' on a label on the stretcher) purchased at the above sale (£351); Sotheby's London, 4 May 1960, lot 104.
L. R. Seymour Esq., acquired from the above in 1961 and thence by descent to the present owner.
Literature
J. Ingamells, The Davies Collection of French Art, Cardiff, 1967, p. 54.
Exhibited
London, Marlborough Fine Art, French Landscapes, Autumn 1961.
Special notice
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Lot Essay

Margaret Sidney Davies, together with her sister Gwendoline and brother David, inherited a fortune amassed by their grandfather in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1908 the sisters, neither of whom married, began jointly to form a collection of pictures. They were largely advised by Hugh Blaker, the brother of their governess. Neither sister claimed to be a connoisseur but with devotion to the cause they selected the artists and Blaker ensured the quality.
By 1924 the collection was essentially complete. It was outstanding in Great Britain, notable not only in terms of quantity but also their pioneering approach towards works from the French late nineteenth-century which comprised over half of the two hundred or so pictures. 'The French nineteenth-century works provided, by contrast, a collection of such quality that they may be described as forming, in 1924, one of the more important collections made anywhere at that time... rivalled only by the remarkable collection formed by the Irishman, Sir Hugh Lane, between 1905 and 1913' (J. Ingamells op. cit., p. 6).
Corot was amongst the first artists that the Davies sisters collected. They had purchased six of his landscapes by 1910 including the present work. Etude de Paysage was bought from the celebrated Alexander Young sale in June 1910. All six were dated between 1855 and 1870 by which time Corot had gained the Légion d'Honneur and a considerable reputation.
This work has been examined and authenticated by Martin Dieterle.
Martin Dieterle will include this work in his forthcoming Corot catalogue raisonné supplement.

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