| Biography of old oil painting master Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot what we can copy |
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot
French Barbizon School painter &
draftsman
born 26 July 1796 - died 22 February 1875
Also known as: Camille-Jean-Baptiste
Corot, Kamill Koro, Kamill Korot, Pére Corot.
Student of: Jean
Victor Bertin (1775-1842),
Achille Etna Michallon
(1796-1822).
Teacher of: Adolphe
Appian (1818-1898),
Eugene Boudin
(1824-1898),
Antoine Chintreuil (1814-1873),
Pascal-Adolphe-Jean
Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929),
Ernest-Joachim Dumax
(1811-after 1882),
Louis Français (1814-1897),
Stanislas Lepine
(1835-1892),
Berthe
Morisot (1841-1895),
Camille Pissarro
(1830-1903),
Alfred Sisley
(1839-1899).
Friend of:
Henri
Fantin-Latour (1836-1904). |
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COROT, JEAN-BAPTISTE CAMILLE
(1796—1875), French landscape painter, was
born in Paris, in a house on the Quai by the
rue du Bac, now demolished, on the 26th of
July 1796. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
family were well-to-do bourgeois people, and
whatever may have been the experience of
some of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
artistic colleagues, Jean Baptiste Camille
Corot never, throughout
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s life, felt the
want of money. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was educated at Rouen and
was afterwards apprenticed to a draper, but
hated commercial life and despised what Jean
Baptiste Camille Corot called its “business tricks,” yet
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot faithfully remained in it until
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was
twenty-six, when Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s father at last consented to Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s adopting the profession of art.
Corot learned little from Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s masters. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot visited Italy on three
occasions: two of Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s Roman studies are now in the Louvre.
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was a regular contributor to the Salon
during Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
lifetime, and in 1846 was decorated with the
cross of the Legion of Honour. Jean Baptiste
Camille Corot was
promoted to be officer in 1867. Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s many friends considered nevertheless
that Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was officially neglected, and in
1874, only a short time before Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s death, they presented him with a
gold medal. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot died in Paris, on the 22nd of
February 1875, and was buried at Père
Lachaise.
Of the painters classed in the Barbizon
school it is probable that Corot will live
the longest, and will continue to occupy the
highest position. Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s art is more individual than
Rousseau’s, whose works are more strictly
traditional; more poetic than that of
Daubigny, who is, however, Corot’s greatest
contemporary rival; and in every sense more
beautiful than J. F. Millet, who thought
more of stern truth than of aesthetic
feeling. |
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Corot’s works are somewhat arbitrarily
divided into periods, but the point of
division is never certain, as Jean Baptiste
Camille Corot often
completed a picture years after it had been
begun. In Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
first style Jean Baptiste Camille Corot painted traditionally and
“tight” — that is to say, with minute
exactness, clear outlines, and with absolute
definition of objects throughout. After
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s fiftieth year
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s methods
changed to breadth of tone and an approach
to poetic power, and about twenty years
later, say from 1865 onwards, Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s manner of painting became full of
“mystery” and poetry. In the last ten years
of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s work Jean
Baptiste Camille Corot became the Père Corot of the artistic
circles of Paris, in which Jean Baptiste
Camille Corot was regarded
with personal affection, and Jean Baptiste
Camille Corot was
acknowledged as one of the five or six
greatest landscape painters the world has
ever seen, along with
Hobbema,
Claude,
Turner and
Constable. |
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During the last few years of Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s life Jean Baptiste Camille Corot earned large sums by Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s pictures, which became greatly
sought after. In 1871 Jean Baptiste Camille
Corot gave £2000 for the
poor of Paris (where Jean Baptiste Camille
Corot remained during the
siege), and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
continued charity was long the subject of
remark. Besides landscapes, of which Jean
Baptiste Camille Corot painted several hundred, Corot produced a
number of figure pictures which are much
prized. These were mostly studio pieces,
executed probably with a view to keep Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s hand in with severe drawing, rather
than with the intention of producing
pictures. Yet many of them are fine in
composition, and in all cases the colour is
remarkable for its strength and purity.
Corot also executed a few etchings and
pencil sketches. In Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot’s landscape pictures Corot was more
traditional in Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
method of work than is usually believed. If
even Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s latest
tree-painting and arrangement are compared
with such a Claude as that which hangs in
the Bridgewater gallery, it will be observed
how similar is Corot’s method and also how
masterly are Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s
results. The works of Corot are scattered
over France and the Netherlands, Great
Britain and America. The following may be
considered as the first half-dozen: Une
Matinée (1850), now in the Louvre; Macbeth
(1859), in the Wallace collection; Le Lac
(1861); L’Arbre brisé (1865); Pastorale—Souvenir
d’Italie (1873), in the Glasgow Corporation
Art Gallery; Biblis (1875). Corot had a
number of followers who called themselves
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s pupils. The
best known are Boudin, Lepine, Chintreuil,
Français and Le Roux. |
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AUTHORITIES. —
H. Dumesnil, Souvenirs intimes (Paris,
1875); Roger-Miles, Les Artistes célèbres:
Corot (Paris, 1891); Roger-Miles, Album
classique des chefs-d’wuvres de Corot
(Paris, 1895); J. Rousseau, Bibliothèque
d’art moderne: Camille Corot (Paris, 1884);
J. Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs
contemporains: Corot (Paris, 1884); Ch.
Bigot, Peintres francais contemporains:
Corot (Paris, 1888); Geo. Moore, Ingres and
Corot in Modern Painting (London, 1893);
David Croal Thomson, Corot (4to, London,
1892); Mrs Schuyler van Rensselaer, “Corot,”
Century Magazine (June 1889); Corot, The
Portfolio (1870), p. 60, (1875) p. 146; R.
A. M. Stevenson, “Corot as an Example of
Style in Painting,” Scottish Art Review
(Aug. 1888); Ethel Birnstigl and Alice
Pollard, Corot (London, 1904); Alfred Robaut,
L'Oeuvre de Corot, catalogue raisonné et
illustré, pricédi de l’histoire de Corot et
de ses isuvres par Etienne Morceau-Nilaton
(Paris, 1905). (D. C. T.) |
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