Cleveland Museum of Art

Group of Trees

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot

Date

1858

Medium

cliché-verre

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The purest expression of the pastoral in French landscape in the mid-19th century may be found in the work of Corot. In the cliché-verre prints that he created between 1854 and 1874, Corot took advantage of the spontaneity of this simple process. Drawing directly on a glass plate coated with collodion, and then printing it like a photographic negative, Corot developed a loose, free style of draftsmanship that was unparalleled in his painting. Prints such as these were made purely for his own pleasure and were not intended for sale. Graceful, fluid lines flow from tree to tree and from tree to land, blending into each other without interruption, suggesting a harmony uniting all of nature. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot introduced the cliché-verre technique to other artists working in an artists' colony at the forest of Fontainebleau, outside Paris.

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