Galerie Paul Prouté

Born in Paris in 1796, where he died in 1875, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot was certainly the most appreciated—if not the most revered—landscape painter of his century. Trained briefly under Michallon and then Bertin, inspired by Poussin and Valenciennes, and deeply influenced by his successive trips to Italy, Corot was the great painter of light that we know him to be (a light he explored throughout a life of voluntary nomadism), while also distinguishing himself through a more intimate body of work consisting of portraits and figures. Committed to studying from life (although he composed his works primarily in the studio), Corot was a prolific and versatile draftsman, using graphite and pen as well as charcoal, his style shifting between meticulous detail, ellipsis, and synthesis. The engraver, perhaps less famous, is nonetheless remarkable, and his autographs, etchings (a medium in which he played a part in its revival at the time), and above all his glass plates (a modern technique if ever there was one, with which he produced nearly seventy pieces) often capture the spontaneity and liveliness of his finest drawings.