Obras de camille corot biography

The hazy landscapes and poetic mythological tableaux of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot mark an important period of transition in French painting, from the academic Neoclassicism of the early 19th century to the vanguard developments of its later decades, when truth to life, and to emotion, became a more important marker of artistic value than historical or moral significance; and when landscape painting came into its own as the defining genre of the age.

Corot was too old to be directly associated with the movements - Realism , Impressionism - which articulated this shift, and was connected with the academic institutions which they spurned. But the lyrical expressiveness of his work, its focus on the natural world, and its movement away from a sharp academic style, made it an important exemplar for the artistic radicals of the lateth century.

For any European painter of the early nineteenth century, the Italian landscape held an almost mystical appeal, having been immortalized by Neoclassical painters such as Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. For the young Corot, fresh from his artistic training, an early trip to Rome and the surrounding areas fulfilled all his expectations of the Mediterranean countryside, and he produced hundreds of paintings and sketches during his time there.

The Bridge at Narni is a perfect example of his style during these Italian years: using traditional academic compositional methods, Corot leads the viewer's eye into and around the canvas with his winding river and carefully considered use of light. The work is partly significant in indicating Corot's deep absorption of Neoclassical principles as a student in Paris.

The idealized Mediterranean setting is rendered quasi-mythological by the inclusion of Roman ruins, the eponymous bridge being the Ponte d'Augusto, built under the Emperor Augustus around 27 BC. The artfully arranged figures in the foreground, meanwhile, seem more like the inhabitants of some classical arcadia than contemporary Italian citizens.

Missing corot paintings

This work is also interesting in teaching us something about Corot's compositional methods: though the painting was completed in the studio, the same scene is the subject of a related oil sketch - now held at the Louvre - which Corot composed en plein air in the Umbrian countryside, spending a great deal of time and energy rendering his subject first-hand.

Exhibited at the Salon of , The Bridge at Narni was one of Corot's early successes, while his technique of painting on location would become a hallmark of his practice. It was also highly influential on the later emergence of Impressionism. Painters such as Claude Monet and Corot's pupil Camille Pissarro would never forget the lesson set forth in works such as this: that a painting, however laborious its execution, must always "remain faithful" to the artist's first impression of the subject.

Jean-baptiste-camille corot landscape paintings

Hagar was the servant of Abraham, whose wife Sarah was unable to conceive. Wanting a child, Abraham had a son with Hagar, only for Sarah to bear him a child of her own, Isaac. Jealous, Sarah banishes Hagar and her son Ishmael to the Beersheba Desert, where they almost die of thirst, only to be saved by an angel at a spring.