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拍品專文
Painted during the period that represents a turning point toward Corot’s late, vaporous manner and increasing concentration on the dramatic effects of mood which would characterize the painting of the 1860s, Haleur de bateau sur son cheval, despite its relatively small size, embodies Corot’s consummate ability to capture the essence of heat and light and the effects of sunlight and shadow which would develop into his mature work, and which earned him the title of ‘The Poet of the Landscape’. This small painting, with its simple subject matter of a single figure on horseback walking along a sunlit towing path at the edge of a river, elicited the following response in 1904:
‘There is a little picture, one of his masterpieces, called 'The Towing-path'. Upon this work alone (the canvas measures less than a foot either way) a whole treatise on painting might be written. Of design there is little, or work less, yet a more consummate piece of art would be difficult to find. ….So little paint that you could scarcely stain a palette knife with it if you scraped it all off the cloth, and yet what beauty! We have all passed such a spot a score of times and seen it in exactly this aspect, but it had no beauty then; It is the soul of the artist which has drawn that out – which has created a wonder; though we, seeing it, may learn to discover similar beauties for ourselves, and learning a lesson from Corot, evolve a world of delight out of commonplace reality’ (E. Birnstingl and A. Pollard, Corot, London, 1904, pp. 98-99).
This charming painting was once in the collection of James Staats Forbes, a Scottish railway engineer, railroad administrator and a keen connoisseur of art. During his lifetime he built up a significant collection of works of the Barbizon School and particularly that of Corot and of the 19th century Dutch painters. His collection consisted of over four thousand pictures and drawings, and was valued at over £220,000 at the time of his death in 1904.
‘There is a little picture, one of his masterpieces, called 'The Towing-path'. Upon this work alone (the canvas measures less than a foot either way) a whole treatise on painting might be written. Of design there is little, or work less, yet a more consummate piece of art would be difficult to find. ….So little paint that you could scarcely stain a palette knife with it if you scraped it all off the cloth, and yet what beauty! We have all passed such a spot a score of times and seen it in exactly this aspect, but it had no beauty then; It is the soul of the artist which has drawn that out – which has created a wonder; though we, seeing it, may learn to discover similar beauties for ourselves, and learning a lesson from Corot, evolve a world of delight out of commonplace reality’ (E. Birnstingl and A. Pollard, Corot, London, 1904, pp. 98-99).
This charming painting was once in the collection of James Staats Forbes, a Scottish railway engineer, railroad administrator and a keen connoisseur of art. During his lifetime he built up a significant collection of works of the Barbizon School and particularly that of Corot and of the 19th century Dutch painters. His collection consisted of over four thousand pictures and drawings, and was valued at over £220,000 at the time of his death in 1904.