Camille Corot: First Teachers

"Seine and Old Bridge at Limay" by Camille Corot

"The first day Camille Corot was free from his job as a dry goods clerk, he took easel and brush and set himself down before the first thing he saw - a view of the Cité from a spot near the Pont Royal. 'The girls from my father's shop,' he said in later life, 'used to run down to the quai to see how Monsieur Camille was getting on. There was a Mademoiselle Rose, for instance, who came most often. She is still alive, and is still Miss Rose, and still comes to see me now and then. Last week she was here, and oh, my friends, what a change and what reflections it gave birth to! My picture has not budged. It is as young as ever, and keeps still the hour and the weather when it was done. But Mademoiselle Rose? But I? What are we?'

Michallon taught Corot at first and gave him counsel good for a youngster: to put himself face to face with nature, to try to render it exactly, to paint what he saw, and translate the impression he received. But soon he died, and Corot, seeking help elsewhere, chose Victor Bertin, who had been Michallon's own master. Bertin was a landscape painter of the classic school, worshiping Poussin's mastery of form, but in his own execution cold, measured, mechanical and hard. He might have taught Corot more and hurt him more had the young man not been forestalled by the long apprenticeship to nature and an inborn gift. As it was, Bertin taught him two things of priceless value, accurate drawing and a sense for 'style' in composition."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Six Portraits: Della Robbia, Correggio, Blake, Corot, George Fuller, Winslow Homer" by Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer.)