French landscape and portrait painter and printmaker in etching (1796-1875)
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (16 July 1796 – 22 February 1875) was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching and famous art teacher in Paris. Corot was a leading figure in the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism
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It is this book ['The Imitation of Christ'] that has helped me lead my life which such serenity and has always left me with a contended heart. I has taught me that men should not puff themselves up with pride, whether they are emperors, adding this or that province tot heir empires, or painters who gain a reputation.
You can see the pains I take to hide the attachment [of the muscles] at the clavicles and sternum, to soften the modeling of the ribs where it seems that the breasts just begin to swell; I try to go about it entirely differently from the usual way, which is above all to show what one knows. As this is not an anatomy lesson, I must bind together as seen in nature everything covering the armatures that make up and support the body, in order to put down only what I experience faced with these tissues of flesh that let one sens the blood beneath, while they reflect the light of the sky. In a word, I must bring to the painting of that breast the same artlessness I would employ in painting a bottle of milk.
The first two things to study are form and values. For me, these are the bases of what is serious art. Color and finish put charm into one’s work.. ..it seems to me very important to begin by an indication of the darkest values (assuming that the canvas is white), and to continue in order to the lightest value. From the darkest to the lightest I would establish twenty shades.. .Never lose sight of that first impression by which you were moved. Begin by determining your composition. Then the values – the relation of the forms to the values. These are the basis. Then the color, and finally the finish.
Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature. I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for a conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me. Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it.. .Before any site and any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.
You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon.. .Ah, a first ray of sunshine!