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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Claire Lebeau and Martin Dieterle for confirming the authenticity of this work.
“This is not a landscape painter, this is the very poet of landscape... who breathes the sadness and joys of nature... The bond, the great bond that makes us the brothers of brooks and trees, he sees it; his figures, as poetic as his forests, are not strangers to the woodlands that surrounds them. He knows, more than anyone, he has discovered all the customs of boughs and leaves; and now that he is sure that he will not distort their inner life, he can dispense with all servile imitation” (T. de Banville, “Le Salon de 1861,” Revue fantaisiste, 1 July 1861, pp. 235-236).
Dating from 1850-1860, Paysage aux trois personnages was painted during the most creative and successful period in Corot’s career. During this period, the artist perfected the misty, often idyllic landscapes for which he became so revered. Corot was considered to be the leading landscape artist of his time, and the present work is an exquisite example not only of this innate ability to capture his local environs, but also his ability to translate onto his canvas the atmospheric effects of any given time of day.
Corot’s reputation as a landscape artist solidified around 1850 and he came to be regarded as a highly original interpreter of the French countryside. In a review of the Salon of 1850-1851, the critic Auguste Desplaces was among the first to set forth an opinion that would hold true for the next quarter century, “M. Corot excels… in reproducing vegetation in its fresh beginnings, he marvelously renders the firstlings of the new world. Grass that has as yet felt only the warmth of May, the first new leaves just emerged from the bud, all that adolescence of newly green nature finds in M. Corot an innocent and well-informed interpreter. This is no academic tracing, no copy of earlier images: one sees a familiarity with and inspired knowledge of the subject” (A. Desplaces, “Salon de 1850,” L’Union, 22 February 1851, pp. 119-122).
Paysage aux trois personnages, unlike many of the heavily wooded landscapes favored by Corot, depicts figures on a path in an open landscape, punctuated by one large tree by a rocky outcropping on the right and a stand of trees on the left hand side of the compositions. It is clearly midday, as the light has the warm clear tones of noontime. The sky is a tour-de-force of atmospheric effects; white clouds tinged with yellow and lavender swirl above the figures on the path below and brilliant blue pockets appear in the center adding a sense of enveloping heat to the landscape. In the center of the path, two figures make their way, one with a walking stick as if on a long journey. At the left, another woman with her heavily lading sack seeks the shade of the leafy trees. A house in the distance draws the viewer’s eye through the landscape and into a world of sunlight and shadow, rocky ledges and dusty paths, all illuminated by the diffuse light of the summer sky.
“This is not a landscape painter, this is the very poet of landscape... who breathes the sadness and joys of nature... The bond, the great bond that makes us the brothers of brooks and trees, he sees it; his figures, as poetic as his forests, are not strangers to the woodlands that surrounds them. He knows, more than anyone, he has discovered all the customs of boughs and leaves; and now that he is sure that he will not distort their inner life, he can dispense with all servile imitation” (T. de Banville, “Le Salon de 1861,” Revue fantaisiste, 1 July 1861, pp. 235-236).
Dating from 1850-1860, Paysage aux trois personnages was painted during the most creative and successful period in Corot’s career. During this period, the artist perfected the misty, often idyllic landscapes for which he became so revered. Corot was considered to be the leading landscape artist of his time, and the present work is an exquisite example not only of this innate ability to capture his local environs, but also his ability to translate onto his canvas the atmospheric effects of any given time of day.
Corot’s reputation as a landscape artist solidified around 1850 and he came to be regarded as a highly original interpreter of the French countryside. In a review of the Salon of 1850-1851, the critic Auguste Desplaces was among the first to set forth an opinion that would hold true for the next quarter century, “M. Corot excels… in reproducing vegetation in its fresh beginnings, he marvelously renders the firstlings of the new world. Grass that has as yet felt only the warmth of May, the first new leaves just emerged from the bud, all that adolescence of newly green nature finds in M. Corot an innocent and well-informed interpreter. This is no academic tracing, no copy of earlier images: one sees a familiarity with and inspired knowledge of the subject” (A. Desplaces, “Salon de 1850,” L’Union, 22 February 1851, pp. 119-122).
Paysage aux trois personnages, unlike many of the heavily wooded landscapes favored by Corot, depicts figures on a path in an open landscape, punctuated by one large tree by a rocky outcropping on the right and a stand of trees on the left hand side of the compositions. It is clearly midday, as the light has the warm clear tones of noontime. The sky is a tour-de-force of atmospheric effects; white clouds tinged with yellow and lavender swirl above the figures on the path below and brilliant blue pockets appear in the center adding a sense of enveloping heat to the landscape. In the center of the path, two figures make their way, one with a walking stick as if on a long journey. At the left, another woman with her heavily lading sack seeks the shade of the leafy trees. A house in the distance draws the viewer’s eye through the landscape and into a world of sunlight and shadow, rocky ledges and dusty paths, all illuminated by the diffuse light of the summer sky.