The Bridge and Castel Sant’Angelo with the Cupola of St. Peters, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Link is to WikiArt, large version here; original is in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Leigon of Honor).
Corot painted in several styles through his career, but this is an example of my favorite type of approach on his part.
To Corot, this small piece — roughly 10×17 in (27×42 cm), painted in oil on paper, later mounted to canvas — was likely a study. It was painted in 1826 or 1827, half a century before the first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris.
What strikes me, other than how beautiful, painterly and appealing I find it, is how contemporary it looks.
I’ve often thought in looking paintings like this, that you could draw a line straight from Corot to the standards of much contemporary landscape and plein air painting — without going through the Impressionists on whom he was so influential, and the American Impressionists, on whom they were so influential — a straight line from Corot to contemporary painterly realism.
