Jean Baptist Corot 17961875 Barbizon School

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Jean Baptist Corot1796-1875Barbizon School
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Self-portrait 1834

• Born to a wigmaker and a hat maker in Paris, Jean
  Baptist Corots (core-o) parents had a
  successful business that catered to the fashion
  needs of the Paris aristocracy.
• Corot originally worked as a draper, making
  curtains. At the age of 26, he turned to
  painting.
• He trained with painters in Paris and then spent
  the next three years in Italy painting the
  Italian countryside and other classical topics.
• This painting is a self-portrait as a young man.

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Rome The Forum Seen from the Farnese Gardens
1826

• An early painting from his first visit to Rome
  shows Corot struggling to figure out how to paint
  the light. He complained that the sun in Italy
  was very difficult to capture properly.
• He did many of his early landscapes outside,
  called plein air (pronounced plain air)
  paintings. Earlier artists had largely idealized
  their landscapes, painting from drawings or
  memory in a studio.

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The Bridge at Nante

• His first major canvas, Corot submitted this work
  to competitions in Paris. It shows an ancient
  bridge in the springtime.
• The painting displays the limited range of colors
  used by Corot. He used almost exclusively
  browns, blacks, dark greens and silvers. The
  limited palette creates a dreamy look in many of
  his works.

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Cabassud Houses
First Leaves, Nantes

• Corot was revered by later painters. Monet said,
  Theres only one master here--Corot. We are
  nothing compared to him. Nothing. Hes
  considered a bridge between the neo-classical
  style and the impressionists.
• He tried to capture the fleeting effect of light
  in nature. Note how you can feel how the air is
  colder here than in the previous picture in Italy.

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Orpheus Leading Eurydice

• This panel tells a classic Greek story. When
  Eurydice (yer-i-dees) dies, Orpheus gets Hades to
  agree to let him lead her back to the living
  world. Hades puts a condition on the agreement,
  though. Orpheus is told that he can lead
  Eurydice out of the underworld, but he cannot
  look at her until they reach earth. In the tale,
  a few steps from freedom, Orpheus gets scared and
  turns to peek at her, which sends her back to the
  underworld forever.

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Orpheus detail

• Orpheus is leading Eurydice and holding the lyre
  (liar), as he is the Greek god of music.
• Corot used lots of white in his pictures, giving
  many of his pictures a dreamy, blurred quality.
• Even in a dream landscape, Corot is careful to
  present nature as real and flooded with light.
• This painting is at the Fine Arts Museum in
  Houston.
• Does this remind you of Botticelli? Does it look
  like they are in motion or posed?

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Peasant Woman with a Cow

• Corot is considered a member of the Barbizon
  school, a French art movement that celebrated
  rural settings as being superior to the cities.
• Unlike the other members of the school, Corot
  rarely idealized the peasants he painted. He
  really tried to paint what he saw, with a unique
  approach to the light.
• Later painters loved how he dealt with the effect
  of light on nature--notice that he isnt
  outlining the trees--rather using brief, flicks
  of colors to show how the eye sees them.

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Woman with a Pearl

• Although now known for his landscapes, Corots
  contemporaries and early collectors loved his
  portraits.
• Degas said, He is still the strongest, he
  anticipated everything.
• He lived to 80, painting over 3,000 works in that
  time. He is thought to be the favorite painter
  for forgers, and there has been a healthy market
  in fakes of his. Why?
• Notice how he uses a very narrow range of color,
  but still has a lot of variation in his works.

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Woman in Blue

• Painted the year before his death, you can see
  how his brushwork has become looser--hes almost
  abandoned any attempt at precise realism.
• An extremely generous man, Corot donated money
  freely to other artists and good causes. He was
  generous with his time with students and peers.
  Corot was revered by later artists and cited as
  an influence by a wide range of artists.
• Although working in a variety of styles, he made
  each his own, ultimately forming his own
  statement.