Corot

First edition (1965) copy of Corot by Keith Roberts

Camille Corot, the great French landscape painter, was born in 1796, during the tumult following the French revolution, and lived until after the Franco-Prussian war. He died in 1875. Corot's hard-working yet placid life spanned the generations from the Romantic movement to the Impressionists. But he had been trained in the 18th century tradition of classical landscape, and he continued to use this idiom for the vast number of studio-paintings that he exhibited with enormous public success at the Salon. It is, however, in his work painted out of doors, which people seldom had the chance to see, that he both anticipated and influenced the Impressionists.

The work of Corot reflects both tradition and change and it is in many ways contradictory. What held his career together, was this amiable artist's strongly constant character throughout his long life. The main purpose of Keith Roberts' Introduction to the 51 paintings in full colour is to show how dependent Corot's pictures were on his personality. It was one which deeply impressed his contemporaries: "An angel who smokes a pipe" is what Degas, a man not given to compliments, once said of him. Corot was a great artist, and, in his strength and simplicity, he was also a great man.

Hardcover with dust jacket

Author: Keith Roberts

Year/Edition: First edition, 1965, Spring Books

Condition: slight wear on dust jacket, otherwise in good vintage condition

Dimensions: 11" x 9"