Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 'The Oak in the Valley', 1871

The Oak in the Valley

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This view was one of several pictures that Corot painted in May 1871, when he was staying with his friend Alfred Robaut in Douai. While many of the pictures are of specific sites, this particular view has not been identified and was probably painted in the studio.

The handling, particularly of the tree and foliage, is very typical of Corot’s late style, and the paint varies greatly in thickness. Corot used the handle-end of the brush to scratch the forms of grasses into the paint in the right foreground and at a late stage added a series of bright olive-green highlights, for example along the bottom edge. The characteristic red hat worn by the man on the left of the group adds a contrasting note of bright colour in the green landscape.

In-depth

This view was one of several pictures that Corot painted in May 1871 while he was staying with his friend Alfred Robaut in Douai. He had gone there to escape the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government which had taken power in March that year following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Many of the pictures Corot painted during his stay in northern France are of specific sites, such as The Marsh at Arleux and Souvenir of Palluel, but this particular view has not been identified. It seems likely that Corot painted it in the studio, and it takes its title from the dominant tree standing at the left.

In the foreground three figures are huddled in a group. The characteristic red hat worn by the man on the left is a common feature of Corot’s figures, introducing a contrasting note of bright colour in the green of the landscape. The handling, particularly of the tree and foliage, is very typical of Corot’s late style. The preliminary sketching-in of the trees is visible through the paint, and many of the earlier branches, painted in fluid black paint, can be seen under the surface. Corot then used a brown, glaze-like paint to pick out the trunk of the main tree and further branches. The paint varies greatly in thickness: the undergrowth at the extreme left is depicted in very thin fluid brown paint, whereas a thicker paint has been used in the sky, such as the stroke of off-white which follows the line of the hills at the right. Corot used the handle-end of the brush to scratch the forms of grasses into the paint in the right foreground (a technique he also employed in The Four Times of Day: Noon). At a late stage he added a series of bright olive-green highlights, for example along the bottom edge, in a mixture of paint which included emerald green.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Oak in the Valley
Artist: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Artist dates: 1796 - 1875
Date made: 1871
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39.8 × 52.8 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Presented by Mrs Alice Bleecker, 1981
Inventory number: NG6466
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 17th-century French Frame

Provenance

Sold by Corot to the actor, sculptor and picture dealer Vincent Alfred Baron (1820–1892), known as Cléophas, and by Baron to fellow actor (principally at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Montparnasse) and picture dealer Victor-Laurent Esliard Surville (né Esliard) (1808–1883); with Leo Partridge, Partridge Fine Art, from whom bought by Agnew, December 1944; sold by Agnew the same month to Rudolph Ernst Brandt (1874–1961) of the banking family that originated in Hamburg, who worked at the London branch of William Brandt’s Sons & Co.; his niece, Mrs Alice Mary Bleecker (1903–1984), by whom presented to the National Gallery in 1981.

Additional information

This painting is included in a list of works with incomplete provenance from 1933–1945; for more information see Whereabouts of paintings 1933–1945.

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Sarah Herring, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Nineteenth Century French Paintings’, vol. 1, ‘The Barbizon School’, London 2019; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2009

Corot to Monet: A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection

The National Gallery (London)

8 July 2009 - 20 September 2009
2013

Corot in the Light of the North

Musée de la Chartreuse

5 October 2013 - 6 January 2014

Musée des Beaux-Arts (Carcassonne)

21 February 2014 - 21 May 2014

Bibliography

1905

A. Robaut, L'oeuvre de Corot: Catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris 1905
1982

National Gallery, The National Gallery Report: January 1980 - December 1981, London 1982
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2013

M.P. Botte et al., Corot dans la lumière du nord (exh. cat. Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcasonne) Milan 2013
2019

Herring, Sarah, National Gallery Catalogues: The Nineteenth Century French Paintings, 1, The Barbizon School, London 2019

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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This view belongs to the group of pictures that Corot painted during his stay in north-east France in 1871. The site depicted is probably the Canal de la Sensée between Arleux and Palluel. Corot first painted the view in May 1871, basing his picture on a study by his friend Alfred Robaut, with wh...

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Monsieur Pivot on Horseback

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In this small, intimate portrait, the rider, turning to look at the viewer, seems to have been caught unawares. He is Monsieur Joseph Pivot, who was about 50 at the time and a neighbour of Corot in Ville-d’Avray. He frequently rode his horse in a nearby wood where Corot also went to paint, and on...

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The marshy pond in the left foreground blends into land rising to a small hill on the right, where two buildings are nestled behind a row of tall trees. In 1867 Corot made the first of many visits to Coubron, which lies to the east of Paris. During a visit in April 1873 he made a sketch in the n...

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The Four Times of Day: Evening

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The Four Times of Day: Morning

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This is the second in the series The Four Times of Day that Corot painted for his friend, fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. In this panel, the light is brighter than in the previous panel, Morning, and fills the picture. There is an overall lightening of tone and a wider range of colours....

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