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Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
(1796-1875) 
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in Paris on July 16, 1796. His mother managed a
fashionable dress shop in Paris on the Rue du Bac and as a result he spent his first four
years with a family near I'sleAdam, and until 1807 lived in a pension on the Rue
Vaugirard. He was sent afterwards on scholarship to a school in Rouen, but did not adapt
well to his new environment, and in 1812, his parents decided it would be best for him to
return to Paris. When he finished his education in the village of Poissy, near Paris, his
father insisted that he venture into business, and though he had expressed his desire to
become an artist, Corot worked in several cloth merchant shops from 1815 until 1822. In
1822, his parents finally agreed to support him as an artist. 
Corot's first teacher was Achile Etna Michallon, a landscapist who had studied in Rome.
The time Corot spent with Michallon was brief, since Michallon died later that same year.
His influence, however, was immense, for it was he who suggested to Corot to carefully
study out-of-doors. Corot afterwards studied with Jean Victor Bertin, who had also been
Michallon's teacher. In 1817, Corot's father bought a country home at Ville d'Avray, and
the countryside became a tremendous source of inspiration for the young artist. With the
financial support of his family, Corot traveled to Italy in 1825: his simple, direct
interpretations of what he saw caused a stir among his colleagues, who included Leopold
Robert, Schnetz and d'Aligny. 
Corot left Rome in 1826 and traveled throughout much of Italy, returning to France in
1828, where he maintained a rigorous schedule throughout his life. During the winters he
worked in his Paris studio, and devoted the summers to travel around France, recording
his experiences with nature. Essentially ignored in the 1830s, Corot won important
patrons and state commissions during the following ten years. In the late 1840s and early
1850s he exhibited regularly and was a member of the Jury in the Salon. His entries for
the Salon generally included traditional subject matter such as Biblical and mythological
themes, although a few landscape studies were also included. Following the death of his
mother in 1851, Corot accepted an invitation from Constant Dutilleux to recover from his
loss. He went to Arras and La Rochelle where he worked constantly. 
In 1851 and 1855 he traveled to the Limousin, Switzerland and to Holland, attaining
considerable recognition during this period. One of his most important victories was in
1855 when he exhibited six paintings at the Universal Exhibition. The exhibition was an
enormous success and earned Corot his place among the Barbizon painters. The public
experienced an increased interest in his works during the late 1850s, and in 1858,
thirtyeight of his works were sold at the Hotel Drouot for a considerable amount. Corot
continued to exhibit at the Paris Salon until the end of his life. He died in the Ville
d'Avray on February 22, 1875, at the age of seventynine.
Corot, one of the foremost landscape artists of his time, is at last recognized as one of
the greatest painters of nature and of the human form, and one of the most moving
recorders of an artist's intimacy with his work. Corot had the extraordinary skill of
being able to delineate not just the contours of objects, but the actual substance and
luminosity. He was one of the first painters to love and to paint nature for its own
sake, and his landscapes were surprisingly sensitive. He possessed a true quality of
vision and expressed a genuine poetic style in his work. Corot's paintings combined
poetry, light and color to reveal a clear and intense truth. He enlightened the realm of
landscape painting with a new naturalism, and a definite romanticism. Corot was a
revolutionary artist and a precursor to the art of the next generation.