Realism in France

Camille Corot

Souvenir of Mortefontaine

about 1864

Oil on canvas, 65 × 89 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

A silvery lake scene recalled rather than recorded; the title means a remembrance.

• Napoleon III bought it at the Salon of 1864; it entered the Louvre in 1889.
• Look at the feathery trees and soft gray-green light, Corot's late manner.
• It shows the road Realism did not take: a dreamy, remembered landscape, the kind of official taste Realism pushed against.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain