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Overview
Camille Corot: an essential 19th century artist
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) is a very big name in a very distinguished century for French art. Though best-known as a landscape painter, he was also no mean printmaker. Known for bridging the Neoclassical tradition of allegory set in nature with Realism and plein air (on the spot) practice, Corot embarked on his artistic career by studying landscape painting. Although he initially struggled to gain acceptance in the establishment, he flourished as a landscapist, benefiting from multiple trips around Europe, especially Italy. Later he focussed on the Barbizon area, near Fontainebleau, hence the name 'The Barbizon School'. His early oil sketches, painted outdoors and characterised by their bright colors, fluid brushstrokes, and prioritisation of the expression of mood and atmosphere over topographical details, greatly influenced the Impressionists. Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir were both great admirers. In addition to poetic landscapes he painted portraits, and, seeking greater recognition at the Paris Salon, biblical and mythological scenes, which were considered the highest form of painting. Despite only moderate success in the Salon, his body of work earned accolades from the influential poet and critic Charles Baudelaire and fellow artists such as Eugene Delacroix - and later the Impressionists. In a 'progressive' account of art history, it could be said that Pissarro takes on where Corot leaves off, particularly in this etching. But such a thesis is in danger of playing down the intense, lumimous, atmospheric, often melancholic quality of his work which should be appreciated for its own sake.
How to look at this etching
At first sight, Wooded Countryside (Campagne boisée) is small and unremarkable. But it is a perfect exemplar of the use of repoussoir elements, typifying the approach of many romantic artists: the arrangement of trees in the foreground to frame a vista, as shown here, and also in Remembrance of Italy (Souvenir d'Italie) (Te Papa 1957-0003-14) and Outside Rome (Environs de Rome) (Te Papa 1971-0012-25). Beyond helping to represent spatial depth, this arrangement presents the 'primordial hunter's' vision. Essentially this is a tunnel-like view of a distant feature in the manner that a hunter's vision of a potential meal in the distance would be focused on it and virtually nothing else. In Corot's prints this presentation of a fixated tunnel-vision is the outcome of the dark massing of trees on the left and right sides of each image - the repoussoir elements. This effect creates a U-shaped aperture that invites a viewer to contemplate the distant vista without the necessity to study what is featured in the immediate foreground.
See:
Artsy, https://www.artsy.net/artwork/jean-baptiste-camille-corot-souvenir-of-tuscany-souvenir-de-toscane
'Prints and Principles', http://www.printsandprinciples.com/2013/05/repoussoir-elements-corot-van-blerk-and.html
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2018