Jean-Baptise Camille Corot - The Marne at Château-Thierry

Canvas, 25 x 40 cm
Signed at the bottom-left: “Corot”

Provenance

Léon Lhermitte Collection (1844-1925).

Private collection, passed down through descendants

Artistic Context and Style

Retrospectively, Corot is often seen as a precursor to Impressionism.(1) However, he was undeniably a classicist with a realist touch that sometimes hinted at romantic tendencies. In his work, the artist combined the notion of classical beauty with that of truth and sentiment. Like Chardin before him, Corot emphasized the importance of sentiment in artistic creation. He advised his students: "Beauty in art is the truth bathed in the impression we have received from the sight of nature. I am struck when I see any place. While seeking conscientious imitation, I never lose for a single moment the emotion that has seized me. Reality is part of art; sentiment completes it. Regarding nature, first seek the form; then, the relationships or tonal values, color, and execution; and all subject to the sentiment you have experienced."(2)

After the death of his first teacher Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822), Corot spent three years in the studio of Jean-Victor Bertin (1767-1842), who imparted the classical landscape concept that he had received from Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819). Corot thus learned to work from nature to later compose, in the studio, landscapes that served as settings for historical, biblical, or mythological actions.

Painting En Plein Air

The earliest works executed outdoors date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. It was not merely about drawing but also about painting from nature. It was in Italy, which holds a prominent place in the tradition of outdoor painting, that this practice truly flourished during the last two decades of the 18th century. The studies painted by Corot during his first stay in Italy, between 1825 and 1828, strike us with their verve and modernity. The artist kept them in his studio until his death, and they became one of the main attractions of his posthumous sale in 1875. They were truly discovered by the public only in 1906, with the entry into the Louvre of Corot's masterpieces donated by Étienne Moreau-Nélaton. Thus, they could not have influenced the Impressionist painters.

Corot's fame was established not by these sketches, which were not intended for public viewing, but by his elaborate compositions. If the artist never exhibited his painted studies from nature at the Salon, he increasingly accepted selling them from 1835 onward. They gradually became full-fledged works in the artist's mind.

Travels and Influence

Corot practiced outdoor painting throughout his career, during his travels across France and his stays in Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, preferring canvas to paper as a support from 1830 onwards. He was particularly sensitive to the landscapes of Picardy, a region where he had many friends. He made numerous stays there from the second half of the 1850s until 1872, three years before his death. Corot appreciated the delicate light, the light mists of these humid areas, and developed his silvery palette there. Among the paintings created in the region is the famous Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864, Paris, Musée du Louvre), a poetic and sentimental landscape painted in the studio based on outdoor studies.

Château-Thierry is a picturesque town on the Marne River, between Paris and Reims. According to Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Corot first stayed there in June 1856. He lodged in Essômes, a neighboring town, with his friend Monsieur Hébert, a former shawl merchant from the Rue du Bac in Paris who had retired there. It is likely that Hébert was a family friend, as Corot's mother's fashion store was also located on the Rue du Bac, opposite the Pont Royal. Moreau-Nélaton described Monsieur Hébert as a "man of taste who bought several paintings from him."

In September 1856, Corot also visited his friend and favorite student, Eugène Lavieille (1820- 1889), who lived in La Ferté-Milon, about thirty kilometers from Château-Thierry, between 1855 and 1860. Corot painted Château-Thierry and its surroundings several times in his company.

Corot returned in 1863 for the wedding of one of his nephews, Jules Chamouillet, with Marie- Henriette Boujot-Vol, daughter of an old local family. Corot, who never married and had no children, remained very close to his nephews. He set up his easel on the castle's rampart path of the counts of Champagne the morning of the wedding and spent every subsequent morning there. He created his famous Vue des remparts de Château-Thierry (Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum). During this occasion, he impressed the young painter Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925), a native of Mont-Saint-Père, near Château-Thierry. Lhermitte was introduced to Corot by Madame Salleron-Charpentier, with whom Corot had stayed during the wedding, and she made him promise to return. He returned in the following years and created several paintings along the Marne and in the surrounding woods. According to Etienne Moreau- Nélaton, Corot and Lhermitte's meeting happened as follows: "Behind Corot, painting at the foot of the castle of the counts of Champagne, near La Fontaine's house, a young man stopped. Full of respectful deference, he watched and remained silent. But the master guessed an enthusiast from the spark in his eyes. It was Corot who approached him. 'Are you a painter, my child? Well, come see me; we'll discuss our matter.'"

This meeting and friendship are significant for our painting, as it belonged to Léon Lhermitte when the catalog raisonné was published in 1905. It is highly likely that Corot gifted it to the young painter.

According to Marie-José Salmon, our painting was made at the base of the gas plant. The author refers to Frédéric Henriet (1826-1918), a landscape painter, engraver, and writer from Château-Thierry who chronicled the artistic life of this region, particularly Corot's stays. Henriet mentions a painting made from this location, but it is certainly not ours, as it depicts a view through willows painted on the back of his paint box, thus on a panel.

Corot created five comprehensive views of Château-Thierry, dated between 1855 and 1865 in the catalog raisonné. Our painting, showing Château-Thierry with the Marne in the foreground, is dated 1855-1860 by the authors.

Footnotes

1 Émile Zola already recognized Corot as the first painter to break away from the classical landscape tradition inherited from Poussin, pioneering plein air painting and the "true sentiment [...] of nature" (Émile Zola, My Salon. The Landscape Artists, 1868).

2 Alfred Robaut, Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, L'œuvre de Corot : catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris, 1905, t. I, p. 72.

Further Bibliography

Alfred Robaut and Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, L’œuvre de Corot, catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris, 1905, vol. II, p. 312, no. 1015 (L. Lhermitte collection), photographed by Yvon.

Marie-José Salmon, Vasques de Rome, Ombrages de Picardie: Hommage de l’Oise à Corot, exhibition catalog, Beauvais, Musée Départemental de l’Oise, October 1 – November 30, 1987, Beauvais, 1987, p. 74 and p. 75, note 18

Exhibitions

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot dans les collections privées: peintures-dessins, exhibition catalog, Paris, Galerie Schmidt, April 24 – July 9, 1996, no. 33 (illustrated).