Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: Recognition

"Scene in the Forest of Fontainebleau" by Corot

"In 1833 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot got a minor medal for one of his exhibited pictures. In 1846 he was decorated for a 'Scene in the Forest of Fontainebleau.' In 1855 he received a first-class medal, and in 1867, oddly enough, one of the second class, but accompanied by the higher decoration of the Legion of Honor; and year by year artists and critics were louder in his praise. But the public was long in learning the fact that he even existed, and his father was quite as long in believing that his art was really art. When the first decoration came, 'Tell me,' he said to one of Corot's comrades, 'has Camille actually any talent?' Nothing would convince him that he was 'the best of us all;' nevertheless he doubled his pension.

Fifty years old when he thus achieved an income of six hundred dollars, Corot was sixty before any one bought his pictures, save now and then a brother artist. When the first customer departed with his purchase, 'Alas!' he cried in humorous despair, 'my collection has been so long complete, and now it is broken!' And when others followed he could hardly believe them serious, or be induced to set prices on his work. 'It is worth such and such a sum, but no one will give that, and I will not sell it for less. I can give my things away if I see fit, but I cannot degrade my art by selling them below their value.' When he actually dared to price one at ten thousand francs, and heard it had been sold, he was sure he had dropped a zero in marking the figures, and wrote to the Salon secretary repeating the sum in written-out words. 

Fortunately, Corot lived long enough to see the prices he thought no one would pay increased twenty-fold at public sales. A picture he had sold for 700 francs went many years later in the auction room for 12,000, and Corot 'swam in happiness,' for, he felt, 'it is not I that have changed, but the constancy of my principles that has triumphed. Never, indeed, did artist pursue his own path with a steadier disregard of public praise; and rarely has an artist so persistently neglected lived to enjoy his fame so long."

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