Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: At the End

"A Village Street, Dardagny" by Corot

"Dropsy was the final stage of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's disease and he foresaw the fatal end. 'I am almost resigned,' he said to his pupil Français, watching by his bed, 'but it is not easy, and I have been a long time getting to the point. Yet I have no reason to complain of my fate - far otherwise. I have had good health for seventy-eight years, and have been able to do nothing but paint for fifty. My family were honest folk. I have had good friends, and think I never did harm to anyone. My lot in life has been excellent. Far from reproaching fate I can only be grateful. I must go - I know it, but don't want to believe it. In spite of myself there is a little bit of hope left in me.'

The next day he asked for a priest, saying his father had done so, and he wished to die like his father. But his last thought was for his art. His feeble fingers believed they held a brush, and he exclaimed, 'See how beautiful it is! I have never seen such beautiful landscapes.' And then he died.

At his funeral the great church was more than full, and the crowd spread through the streets outside. Fauré sang his requiem to an air Corot had himself selected - the slow movement from Beethoven's seventh symphony. And by the open grave M. de Chennevières, Director of the Beaux Arts, spoke about him in touching words:

'All the youth of Paris loved him, for he loved youth, and his talent was youth eternally new. . . And in his immortal works he praised God in His skies and birds and trees.'

As the last phrase was spoken, we are told, a linnet perched on a branch nearby and burst into a gush of song; and when in 1880 a monument to the beloved great painter who talked so often of 'mes feuilles et mes petits oiseaux [my leaves and my little birds]' was set up by his brethren on the border of the little lake at Ville d'Avray, the sculptor carved upon it the branch and the singing bird."

To be continued

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