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