Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: At Nature's Feet

"Forest at Fontainebleau" by Corot

"If ever a man worked hard at his art it was Corot. The number of his preparatory studies was immense, and they were made in his latest as well as his earliest years. 'Conscience' was his watchword, the nickname his scholars gave him, the one recipe he gave them when they asked him how to learn to paint. 

The first things to produce, he said, were 'studies in submission;' later came the time for studies in picture-making. He did not approve of academies and schools, and deemed it enough to study the old masters with the eye, without much attempt at actual copying. He thought the great school of Nature might suffice to form soul and sight and hand; but this school one should never desert and could not frequent too diligently.

It is true, as a friend once said, that what Corot wanted to paint was 'not so much Nature as his love for her.' But to love her meant to peruse her with patient care, to know her well and fully; and to paint his love meant not to alter her charm but to bring into clear relief those elements therein which most appealed to him. 

Individuality in art no man prized more highly; but he defined it as 'the individual expression of a truth,' and said that to develop it one must work 'with an ardor that knows no concessions.' His whole life was given up to work, and his whole work was an effort to see Nature with more and more distinctness, and to render her with more and more fidelity. A gray-haired man, a master among his fellows, a poet before the world, he was to the end a child at the Great Mother's knee; and to the end a conscientious, often a despairing, aspirant when he had a brush in hand."

To be continued

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