Realism in France

Camille Corot

Forest of Fontainebleau

1834

Oil on canvas, 175.6 × 242.6 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington

A large forest view, painted for the Salon of 1834 from sketches made outdoors.

• It was still framed as a historic landscape: viewers took the woman reading in the foreground for Mary Magdalene.
• The National Gallery notes the "clarity and freshness of vision" that set Corot apart from formula landscapes.
• The forest, not the small figure, holds the eye.

Salon

the official annual or biennial art exhibition in Paris, where artists built their reputations.

Historic landscape

a landscape with a story from history, myth or the Bible, a category meant to raise landscape's status.

Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington · Public domain (NGA Open Access)