Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Corot was born in Paris and studied there with the classicizing painters Michallon and Bertin before leaving in 1825 for the first of three visits he made to Italy. His many oil studies painted outdoors provided him with a library of landscape motifs that he often incorporated into canvases with more traditional classical or religious subjects intended for exhibition. Corot traveled elsewhere in Europe and widely in France, working in the vicinity of Rouen, in the forest of Fontainebleau, and at Ville-d’Avray, near Paris, where his father had a house. Though he exhibited frequently in the Salons and won many honors, he remained a man of great simplicity, remembered for his many benefactions toward fellow artists.

Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.