\paperw19995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 French painter.\par
Raised in a family of wealthy merchants, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot began his apprenticeship as a pupi
l of Michallon and then Bertin, landscape painters in the classical style, who initiated him into painting from nature. In 1825 he left for Italy, where he stayed for three years. During this first visit to Italy the painter did not devote himself to the
study of the old masters, but chose to paint \i plein air \i0 views of Rome with a modern immediacy. His enthusiasm for the clear light of the Mediterranean prompted Corot to conduct research into the values of light and color, which he rendered with a
thick brush stroke and a very light palette (\i The Coliseum seen from the Arches of ConstantineÆs Basilica\i0 , 1825, Paris, Louvre; \i Castel SantÆAngelo in Rome\i0 , 1826-28, Paris, Louvre; \i The Roman Bridge at Narni\i0 , 1827, Paris, Louvre). On hi
s return to Paris, however, these pictures were not shown to the public. Thus Corot began the ôdouble lifeö that was to characterize the rest of his career, in which he separated his official output, made up of landscapes in the classical manner peopled
with nymphs and shepherds (\i A Morning: Dance of Nymphs\i0 , ca. 1850, Paris, Louvre) from his private production of views and landscapes that were free of any reference to tradition or academic rules. After a few years moving between Paris and the Fore
st of Fontainebleau, where he worked in contact with the painters of the Barbizon School, along with frequent excursions to the provinces (\i Chartres Cathedral\i0 , 1830, Paris, Louvre), he returned to Italy in 1834, painting luminous sketches of the pl
aces he visited on his journeys to Florence, Genoa, Venice, and the lakes of Lombardy (\i The Grand Canal Viewed from the Campo della Caritα\i0 , 1834, Paris, private. collection; \i The City and Lake of Como\i0 , 1834, Paris, private collection). In 1843 a t
hird visit took him to Turin, Genoa, and Rome and its surroundings, providing the occasion for other surprising pictorial impressions (\i Tivoli, the Gardens of the Villa dÆEste\i0 , 1843, Paris, Louvre; \i Marietta, Roman Odalisque\i0 , 1843, Paris, Pet
it Palais). In the meantime he had achieved public renown and began to obtain the first official recognition of his merits, culminating in the acquisition of one of his paintings by Napoleon III at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The artist conti
nued his pictorial wanderings until his death, using the same open-minded approach in the representation of both landscapes and figures (\i The Woman in Blue\i0 , 1874, Paris, Louvre), breaking out of the stylistic mold of his time, and creating a manner
free of schemes and founded on an untiring investigation in the qualities of tone and light. Combined with the freshness of his palette, it is this new sensitivity that makes CorotÆs painting the forerunner of Impressionist experimentation.
