Camille Corot

Quai Des Paquis, Geneva, 1841
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (July 26, 1796 � February 22, 1875) was a French landscape painter.

Camille Corot was born in Paris, into a fairly affluent middle class family. The success of his family in business assured that through out his life he never really wanted for money.

He was educated at Rouen and became an apprentice as a draper, selling cloth.

He stayed in the family business until the age of 28 at which time his father consented to allow him to follow an artistic carreer.

Corot learned little from his masters. He visited Italy on three occasions: two of his Roman studies are now in the Louvre Museum.

He was a regular contributor to the Salon during his lifetime, and in 1846 was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour.

He was promoted to be an officer in 1867. He died in Paris and is buried at P�re Lachaise.

Camille Corot is considered one of the more reknown members of the Barbizon School.

Corot's works are divided into periods, but the point of division is never certain. He was in the habit of completing a picture years after it had been begun.

In his first style, he painted traditionally, with minute exactness, clear outlines and with absolute definition.

After his fiftieth year, his methods changed to breadth of tone and an approach to poetic power, and about twenty years later, from 1865 onwards, his manner of painting became full of mystery and poetry.

In the last ten years of his work he became the P�re Corot of the artistic circles of Paris, in which he was regarded with personal affection.

He was acknowledged as one of the five or six great landscape painters of all time.

During the last few years of his life his works became very popular and earned him large sums of money.

In 1871, in the siege of Paris during the Franco Prussian War, Camille Corot began a tradition of charitable works. He remained in Paris during that period and gave much money to the poor.

Besides the several hundred landscapes that Corot paineted he also produced some highly sought after portraits. Many of them are fine in composition, and in all cases the color is remarkable for its strength and purity.

Corot also executed a few etchings and pencil sketches.

The works of Corot are scattered over France and the Netherlands, Britain and America.