Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: Painting the Effect

"Meadow with Two Large Trees" by Corot

"'Truth,' said Corot, 'is the first thing in art and the second and the third.' But the whole truth cannot be told at once. A selection from the mass of nature's truths is what the artist shows - a few things at a time, and with sufficient emphasis to make them clearly felt. Crowd in too much and you spoil the picture, weaken the impression, conceal your meaning, falsify everything in the attempt to be too true.

What now were the truths that he interpreted at the necessary sacrifice of others which were less important in his eyes? Corot prized effects rather than what the non-artistic world calls solid facts. But effects are as truly facts as are the individual features and details which make them. Indeed, effects are the most essential, as well as interesting of all facts. It is effects that we see first when we are in Nature's presence, that impress us most, and dwell the longest in our minds.

Look at the same scene on a sunny morning or by cloudy sunset light. It is not the same scene. The features are the same, but their effects have changed, and this means a new landscape, a novel picture. The mistake of too many modern painters is that they paint from analysis, not from sight. They paint the things they know are there, not the things they perceive just as they perceive them. This Corot never did. 

He studied analytically and learned all he could about solid facts, but he painted synthetically - omitting many things that he knew about, and even many that he saw at the moment, in order to portray more clearly the general result. And this general result he found in the main lines of the scene before him, in its dominant tone, in the broad relationships of one mass of color to all others, in the aspect of the sky, the character of the atmosphere, and the play of light, and in the palpitating incessant movement of sky and air and leaf.

Look at one of Corot's skies and you will see its shimmering, pulsating quality. Everywhere, over all, behind all, in all, you will see the enveloping air and the light which infiltrates this thing and transfigures that; the air and the light which make all things what they are, which create the landscape by creating its color, its expression, its effect; the air and the light which are the movement, the spirit, the very essence of nature. What we ask the painter is not just how his tree was constructed, but just how it looked as a feature in the beauty and aliveness of the scene. What we want is the general effect and the way it harmonized with the effect of its surroundings.

The generalized structure of Corot's trees, their blurred contours and flying, feathery spray - these are not untruths. They are merely compromises with the stern necessities of paint, devices he employed, not because he was unable to draw trees with precision, but because, had he done this, his foliage would have been too solid and inert for truth. So his trees are alive, and, as he loved to say, the light can reach their inmost leaves, and the little birds can fly among their branches."

To be continued

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