Corot, Poet of the Landscape

Ville d’Avray, 1867

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was born in Paris on July 16, 1796. He was a giant of the Barbizon school and humbled his contemporaries with brushwork that almost defies description along with a poet's understanding of light. His landscapes speak. The trees themselves are like figures in a scene. And yet he could also paint people quite well, bathing women in soft light and delicate features like the landscapes of his French countryside. In the Renaissance and Baroque the landscape was often depicted in sunrise or glowing sunset, as if revealing the untapped potential of humanity itself, whereas with Corot overcast skies and trees blowing in the wind foreshadow the progress of man looming over nature. He still manages to make breathtaking work in the process.

In Ville d’Avray he makes the ordinary surreal, using strong horizontals but makes the two trees vibrate with his characteristic blurred brushstrokes that are even more impressive seen in person. Corot realized early on in his career that painting or even suggesting every leaf would be tiresome in such a landscape without figures. Instead, the Impressionism he anticipates gives a glow to the foliage, and he makes the branches and trunks sharp and dark. Note the accurate reflection of the buildings in the water. The haze of the blue sky above them lightens the dark foreground elements, and we see a tranquil scene that invites us to participate.

Souvenir de Mortefontaine, ca.1864

Sunlight shimmers in the lake behind this beautiful scene, a relatively rare occurrence for Corot. Note how the massive diagonal lines of the big tree are mimicked by the smaller one on the left, where three figures are dwarfed by them. Nature itself is the subject with Corot, and although there is more suggestion of details in the foliage here it is color and light that dominate this work. Atmospheric perspective is used to a poetic grace here that few painters have been able to create. Squint your eyes and that water with reflected trees glows with perfect values, and the highlights of the grass underneath the big tree, as well as how the sky pokes through the tree foliage...this is pure heaven.

Nymphes and Fauns, ca.1870
A more sombre piece that is more typical of Corot, this time he contrasts dancing figures against the faint glow of a setting sun beneath an overcast sky. Strong verticals dominate here, and instead of dark shadows Corot fills them with warm greens and yellows, with a small area of clear water to divide the ground in half. Corot conjures a world here without any technology or interference with nature whatsoever...pure harmony and poetry.

La Femme à la perle, ca.1869
Here Corot proves he is definitely no slouch in the portrait arena. Delicate facial features, graceful gesture, and a soft, warm light, Notice the thin wreath of leaves around her hair. Corot sees true beauty as something without status or social class, but pure in the way nature made her. Innocent. Captivating. This is the work of a painter made dreams out of the banal.

Orazio Riminaldi

Samson defeats Philistines, 1625 A painter from Pisa, Orazio Riminaldi was a Baroque tenebrist born in 1586 on September 5th. Riminaldi was unfortunately one of many painters who died young, in his case from the plague in 1630, but it is what he accomplished in those brief years that merits attention. Riminaldi's expressive faces and body language, along with superb skin tones and dramatic skies, take his art to a deeper level than some his contemporaries, who were perhaps more cautious in their techniques. Look at the fury of the scene above. It is quite rare in painting to see a pile of bodies with a warrior like Samson no less, stepping on top of one while grabbing the hair of another. And yet Riminaldi manages to make it look majestic and noble. The anatomy of the figures shows foreshortening combined with Caravaggio's chiaroscuro in a tight yet carefully arranged composition. By making it vertical, in a triangular design, it heightens the sense of drama while requi...

Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to fi...

Carl Holsøe, Master of Rooms

The Artist's Wife sitting at a Window in a sunlit Room, ca.1900 Carl Vilhelm Holsøe was born on the 12 of March, 1863 in northeast Denmark. Holsøe studied in Copenhagen and under the Danish Master Peder Krøyer . Unlike many painters who worked outdoors and favored the majestic landscapes of their environment, Holsøe chose the psychological mood of the domestic interior and the way light spills into rooms. Although Holsøe is often compared to his contemporary and friend, Vilhelm Hammershøi , Holsøe is more authentic and less vacant emotionally. His use of sunlight captures the mindfulness of the moment in a way that is reminiscent of Dutch Masters, utilizing the power of quiet and reading as emotionally satisfying and tranquil. In the painting above, his wife sits in a kitchen chair looking out the window. On the table are cups of tea and a teapot that Holsøe gently lights the rims. The drapes are of a texture so thick it almost seems like pastel. Look at the greenish reflect...

beside the easel

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