Camille Corot

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot is considered one of the most important French landscape painters of his time. Born in Paris in 1796, he grew up in upper-middle-class conditions in Rouen. He broke off an apprenticeship as a fabric dealer in order to devote himself wholly to painting. He frequently worked out of doors, in the environs of Rouen and Paris and in the forests of Barbizon near Fontainebleau. In 1825 he travelled to Italy and frequently returned there in subsequent years. His renderings of the Italian and French landscape reveal a subtle sensitivity for the values of light and atmosphere. He first submitted his works to the Paris Salon in 1827, and it was there that he later regularly exhibited landscape paintings with mythological or biblical scenes. He drew attention in 1835 with his Hagar in the Wilderness and in 1837 with Saint Jerome in the Desert. In 1846 he received official recognition, being dubbed a knight of the Legion of Honour. His works influenced such painters of the Barbizon School as Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau and Charles-François Dabigny. His most famous pupil was Camille Pissarro. Corot died in Paris in 1875.