L’étang de Ville-d’Avray (1865-1870)

Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille (1796-1875)

L’étang de Ville-d’Avray (The pond at Ville d’Avray)
18651870
Oil on canvas, 40 x 61.5 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

Lulled by the morning light, a young girl sits by a pond, with two peaceful cows keeping her company. In this oil on canvas dating from 18651870, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot creates a dreamlike landscape linked to his period of artistic maturity.

The woman, standing in the foreground with her back to the viewer, by the Ville d’Avray lagoon is not the main subject, but she is one of the links in the painting. The two cows on the left, the few houses on the opposite bank, and the birch and other trees that form an ellipse around the surface of the water, create, like the figure, the subtle balance of the landscape. The strength of Corot’s art clearly lies in his ability to simply predict the stillness of a place without imposing any central theme on the viewer. The eye caresses the painting, stops at a point, then slowly lets itself be carried away towards the elegiac atmosphere, following here and there the artist’s silky brushstrokes. A silent landscape, conducive to serenity, as if taken from a dream. Corot is a creator of harmony. The classic composition reminiscent of Italy, the white light or the cameo of grey give the painting an elegant sobriety. The melancholy suggested by the girl’s pose in the cottony grass responds to the velvety tones that envelop the scene. Maxime Du Camp declared: “She never copies nature, she dreams it and reproduces it as she sees it in her dreams”. However, Corot was undoubtedly a plein air landscape painter. To enjoy nature to the full, he would get up at dawn, go out to the paths with his easel and then settle down and wait until he captured the ideal moment in which nature gave rise to the painting. The silver tones and the use of a vaporous light reflected in the water are sensitively combined to exalt this dreamlike atmosphere. The opaline nuances are highlighted by the use of small colored notes – the tiles on the roofs, the leather of the cows or the girl’s shirt – which make the whole of the colors of the painting vibrate. The slightly blurred appearance is undoubtedly inspired by the landscape photographers who were practising at that time in the undergrowth of the Fontainebleau forest (Eugène Cuvilier, Deux chênes en hiver, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris). A keen photographer, Corot had a collection of clichés depicting landscapes which may have influenced his painting. As a precursor and friend of the Barbizon landscape painters, he incorporated into his work a delicate treatment of tree trunks and great subtlety in the leaves. These words of Paul Valéry prove the love he felt for the tree motif: “In Corot, it is Someone”. The place depicted, Ville d’Avray, was often illustrated by the painter, who stayed there regularly and painted numerous works on a very similar theme, notably Ville d’Avray. The pond at the boulders before the villas. View of the City of Avray (1873, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen). Although the cows have disappeared, Corot returned to the same point of view, adding two figures in a warmer light accompanied by more pronounced shadows. We should also relate the translucent manner achieved in this painting to one of the painter’s masterpieces, admired and hailed by critics at the Salon of 1864, Souvenir de Mortefontaine (Musée du LouvreParis). The MNBA also has a work of the same nature entitled Wooded Landscape Seen from a Village (18601870, inv. 8538).

If Corot was initially interested in gradations of tone and in the effects of the skies (Campagne de Rome, la Cervara, 1827, Musée du Louvre), around 1850 he modified his palette to develop this misty style, called floconneuse (cottony). He also moved away from neoclassical themes with historical connotations (Agar in the Desert, 1835, Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York) to give free rein to his imagination and describe the idea of ​​memory, to represent emotions. He then preferred poetic evocation to naturalistic representation.

Introduced to landscape painting by Achille Etna Michallon, Corot had been taken by his master to the Forest of Fontainebleau as early as 1822. He became familiar with the landscapes around Paris, but also travelled along the routes of FranceNormandy, Auvergne, Picardy, the Dauphiné – to discover new countryside and seascapes (Trouville, bateaux de pêche échoués dans le chenal, 18481875, Musée d’OrsayParis). He also travelled to Italy three times, where he absorbed the light of the south and the rigorous neoclassical formation of the composite landscape (Florence. Vue prise des jardins Boboli, 183540, Musée du Louvre). However, although he mainly excelled in landscapes, his painting contains a good number of portraits or fantasy figures (La dame en bleu, 1874, Musée du Louvre) as well as a considerable number of architectural views (Le beffroi de Douai, 1871, Musée du Louvre).

Heir to his peers, Poussin, Claude le Lorrain and Watteau, from whom he drew clarity, sensitivity and charm, Corot established himself as one of the most influential landscape painters of his century thanks to the humility that was absolutely characteristic of his brush and of his person. The artist enjoyed great success throughout his career, establishing a connection between academics and modern landscape painters. Charles Baudelaire himself elevated him to the pantheon of 19th century painters, saying that he was “at the head of the modern school of landscape”. Always in a human, sometimes naive way, Corot travelled through the century suggesting his own evolution of landscape. He did not join any specific current, since he did not claim to belong to the Romantics, nor to be the father of the Symbolists or the Impressionists. With flexibility, he adapted to what was for him the best of paintings, pure and simple, but controlled and inspired. A painting that became, for that very reason, indisputably majestic. What better words than those of the painter Daubigny who, addressing his friend Corot, said: “You put nothing and everything is there”. (Marie Lesbats | MNBA)

See also:

• Ville d’Avray (France)