Bourberouge. Deux jeunes filles dans une prairie

The two little girls depicted in the foreground of this charming work by Camille Corot are Mlle. Delalain, the daughter of the factory superintendent of the forge at Bourberouge and Thilda de Pracomtal. Upon its completion, Corot gave this small painting as a gift to Thilda’s mother, Bathilde, Vicomtesse de Failly, and the inscription on the reverse is by the Marquis de Chenevrières, Bathilde’s uncle, to whom she gifted the painting in 1857, most likely to commemorate his visit in November of that year. Corot quite often made gifts of these small paintings to his hosts while upon his travels through the French countryside.

The present work is unusual in the artist’s oeuvre in that it depicts a working forge, although the smokestack from the usine is securely situated within the surrounding landscape. Aside from this interesting anomaly, the present painting exhibits all the hallmarks of the master, with its cool diffuse light and the extraordinary symphony of whites, lavenders, grays and blues in the sky. The buildings of the forge nestle into the forested landscape, and with their white and gray facades topped by the darker gray roofs they serve as an anchor to create the solid middle ground of the painting. The buildings are almost abstract in their simplicity. The foreground is created by washes of blues, grays and greens, just enough to create the impression of a meadow, and the figures of the two young girls, one seated and one standing, almost shimmer in the light of a summer’s day.