Richard E. Schiff

Corot: History and Love
by Denise Jourgens

  History and Love. You could say that every artist, and each and every one of us perches on the fence that separates these two opposing forces. Each artist must reconcile the past with the need and love to innovate. Over the course of his career, Corot bridged that gap, and his work consequently reflects back an artistic debate. Corot is firmly entrenched within the 19th century Modernist revolution.

  There is an eclecticism in Corot's work displayed in broad and ample terms. He positioned himself outside the circle of artistic debate. Corot never attempted to explain his art; he just painted, concerned only with the relationship with his subjects, expressing it in paint, rather than communicating a philosophy of art. No one else should attempt to explain Corot either.

Let 's forget "Papa Corot", "the father of Impressionism", the painter of light en plein-air; let 's put aside the wistful Romantic poet of the landscape; let 's forget the realist who painted the observable world around him. These characteristics are aspects of art history, an attempt to make sense of the history of art. There is only one painter here. History is an indelible part of his
consciousness; his art is impossible without it. History is woven into his spirit. But with every stroke of the brush, with the merging and collusion of brush strokes that create the image, it is not History he is addressing, but Love. And Love must be addressed in many forms.

Corot and the Land

Something astonishing happened to Nature between Corot's moment of observation and his act of "recording" it.

With every curve of a Corot tree reality is abstracted for the sake of lyricism. He loved music: many of his paintings are like symphonies.

When looking at his paintings try to envision Corot at work, thinking, observing, reacting in paint, moving his hand, manipulating his brush, applying the paint, the pungent odour of oil, the sweep of the brush on canvas, rough at first until the oil meets it and glides soundlessly along the surface: the sensual pleasure of creation. A brush stroke is a visual equivalent of the an isolated letter, or a note of music, until subsequent brush strokes merge and create a new reality conceived in the artist's mind, as letters make words and notes make sonatas. He is absorbing the external world and filtering it into his art, making no overt or overbearing statements, trying to be more than competent, poetic perhaps, taking nature and transforming it into the image of his mind, a lifetime of cognitive activity turned inside out and laid bare on the canvas.