Corot - Page 2

critics will approve, and
at the Salon your work will never be either enskyed nor consigned to
the catacombs. Society will court you, fair ladies will smile and
encourage. You will be a success; your name will be safely
pigeonholed among the unobjectionable ones, and before your wind-
combed shock of hair has turned to silver, you will be supplanted by
a new crop of fashion's favorites.

It is a fact worth noting that the two greatest landscape-painters
of all time were city-born and city-bred. Turner was born in London,
the son of a barber, and Fate held him so in leash that he never got
beyond the sound of Bow Bells until he was a man grown. Corot was
born in Paris, and his first outdoor sketch, made at twenty-two, was
done amidst the din and jostle of the quays of the Seine.

Five strong men made up the Barbizon School, and of these, three
were reared in Paris--Paris the frivolous, Paris the pleasure-
loving. Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny were children of the
Metropolis.

I state these facts in the interests of truth, and also to ease
conscience, for I am aware that I have glorified the country boy in
pages gone before, as if God were kind to him alone.

Turner made over a million dollars by the work of his hands
(reinforced by head and heart); and left a discard of nineteen
thousand sketches to the British Nation. Was ever such an example of
concentration, energy and industry known in the history of art?
Corot, six feet one, weight two hundred, ruddy, simple, guileless,
singing softly to himself as he walked, in peasant blouse, and
sabot-shod, used to come up to Paris, his birthplace, two or three
times a year, and the gamins would follow him on the streets, making
remarks irrelevant and comments uncomplimentary, just as they might
follow old Joshua Whitcomb on Broadway in New York.

British grandees often dress like farmers, for pride may manifest
itself in simplicity, but the disinterested pose of Camille Corot,
if pose it was, fitted him as the feathers fit a wild duck. If pose
is natural it surely is not pose: and Corot, the simplest man in the
world, was regarded by the many as a man of mannerisms. His work was
so quiet and modest that the art world refused to regard it
seriously. Corot was as unpretentious as Walt Whitman and just as
free from vanity.

During the War of the Rebellion, Whitman bankrupted himself in purse
and body by caring for the stricken soldiers. At the siege of Paris,
Corot could have kept outside the barriers, but safety for himself
he would not accept. He remained in the city, refused every comfort
that he could not divide with others, spent all the money he had in
caring for the wounded, nursed the sick by night and day, listened
to