Landscape (The Large Tree)
c. 1865–70 · charcoal with stumping, erasing, and wet brushwork on light brown wove paper · Sheet: 24.2 x 41.8 cm (9 1/2 x 16 7/16 in.)
Corot, Landscape (The Large Tree), c. 1865–70. charcoal with stumping, erasing, and wet brushwork on light brown wove paper.
Corot, Landscape (The Large Tree), c. 1865 to 1870, charcoal.
The Cleveland Museum of Art · Bequest of Muriel Butkin
How to look at a Corot
- Squint first. Count the masses. If you count more than four, squint harder.
- Find the lightest light (nearly always sky, or water reflecting sky) and the darkest dark (nearly always a foreground tree trunk or a shadow under foliage). Everything else sits between them.
- In the Italian graphite sheets, notice how much paper is untouched and how few lines describe a whole hill town. Then notice that every one of those lines is exactly placed.
- In the late charcoals, look for where an edge disappears: a trunk into shadow, a hill into sky. Those lost edges are the air.
- In the etchings, half-close your eyes until the lines vanish and only tones remain. That is what he was building.
