Part 2

Grey dawn! The words had a cold and gloomy sound until Corot interpreted them, taking the gloom away and leaving of the cold only the delicious shiver of the morning freshness. Beautiful almost as the dawn itself--born of it as they were--are those wonderful pearly greys of his. His palette seemed to hold an infinite range of them, each pure and perfect in itself, and each in a true harmonic relation to the others.

And if the painted dawns are beautiful, they are also true; they carry instant conviction of their absolute verity. There is only one thing that can make a painted canvas do this, and that is truth of tone, and of tone-values Corot made himself a master, mainly because he never ceased to be a student. He retained the eye of a child, but his mind became stored with the accumulated experience of many long hours that were only not laborious because the work was a delight. And great as the store grew in process of time, he was adding to it up to the last.

Here is a picture by Albert Wolff of the artist at the age of 79, when the hand of Death was already stretched out towards him. "An old man, come to the completion of a long life, clothed in a blouse, sheltered under a parasol, his white hair aureoled in reflections, attentive as a scholar, trying to surprise some secret of nature that had escaped him for seventy years, smiling at the chatter of the birds, and every now and again throwing them the bar of a song, as happy to live and enjoy the poetry of the fields as he had been at twenty. Old as he was, this great artist still hoped to be learning."

It is altogether an important thing about Corot that he was always singing--in season and out of season I was about to say, when I remembered that he would probably have declared that it was always singing-time. He went to his work carolling like a lark, though with a somewhat robuster organ, and snatches of song punctuated his brush strokes. The day's work done, he broke out into melody in earnest, and sang to himself, to his friends, at home or abroad, with equal vigour and enjoyment. We are told that on one occasion his irrepressible song broke out at an official reception, doubtless to the confusion of dignities and the shocking of many most respectable people.

I cannot but think that something of music found its way into Corot's pictures. They look as if they could have been done in music as well as they were done in paint. In a way they were: if there was always a song on his lips, surely there was also a song at his heart. One may say that his paintings were built to music like the walls of Thebes. They are haunted by sweet harmonies, and seem charged with hidden melodies that tremble on the verge of sound.

Many of those who read may shake their heads at this attempt to make a confusion of two arts, but my apology shall take the form of a quotation from Corot himself. Moved to sudden emotion by a magnificent view, he exclaimed, "What harmony! What grandeur! It is like Gluck!" I think the man who said that may possibly have painted a little music, without caring for a moment whether he was confusing the arts or not. Perhaps he felt that painting and music were more nearly related than a certain school of critics can allow itself to admit. But that is by the way.

When in Paris he was frequent in his attendances at concerts and the opera, and indeed music always drew him with a power only second to that of his chosen mistress--painting. As the twig is bent the tree will grow--it may be that had the accidents of his early environment been other than they were, his name would be famous as that of a great composer instead of a great painter. Fortunately we do not know what we may have missed, while we are fully conscious of what we have gained.

* * * * *

The father of Corot the painter was Louis Jacques Corot, who, if he escaped being altogether a hairdresser, only did so by a narrow margin. One would rather like to imagine him as another "Carrousel, the barber of Meridian Street."

"Such was his art, he could with ease Curl wit into the dullest face; Or to a goddess of old Greece Lend a new wonder and a grace. The curling irons in his hand Almost grew quick enough to speak; The razor was a magic wand That understood the softest cheek."

Such was Carrousel, according to Aubrey Beardsley's ballad, and such Louis Jacques Corot should surely have been, if only to make his son more easily explainable; but, as a matter of fact, he appears at an early age to have forsaken the high art of hairdressing for more strictly commercial pursuits. He became a clerk, and his wife's assistant manager.

For Madame Corot was a business woman--very much so. She was a native of Switzerland, and evidently of the practical nature that so often distinguishes the Swiss people. A woman of property in a moderate way, and two years older than her husband, as well as a capable manager, she does not appear by any means to have allowed marriage to submerge her own personality. As a _marchande de modes_ she was a distinct success. Fashion found its way to her establishment in the Rue du Bac, and the name Corot became a hall-mark of elegance.

Perhaps her son owed more to his mother than has sometimes been suspected. Corot himself remarked that a skill equal to that of the painter was often shown by the costumier in the blending of colours--indeed he went farther, and said as much of a certain flower-seller of his acquaintance and her bouquet-making. Really, when one comes to think of it, he may be said to come of artists on both sides, for if his father was scarcely as much of a hairdresser as we should like him to be, his paternal grandfather's claim to the description is beyond criticism.

Under these circumstances it is a little sad that, when he had completed his educational career without winning any considerable distinction, it was decided to make a draper of him. There is every evidence that, in so far as the attempt went, he made a very bad draper indeed. I do not know how long it took him to come to the conclusion that he would never make a good one--not very long, I should say--but after a trial of six years or so, it would seem that his father had arrived at the same conclusion. When his son declared his intention of abandoning drapery and of becoming a painter, Corot _père_ did not offer any strenuous objection. He thought that the young man was a fool, and said so, with possibly a little bitterness, but on the whole with resignation. What was more to the point, he made a small provision, so that his son might live while "amusing himself."

The provision in question was certainly a small one--1500 francs a year--but it prevented Corot from ever knowing the extremities of poverty to which some of his brilliant contemporaries were reduced. As he said, he could always count on "shoes and soup"--and shoes and soup, if not much in themselves, can often bridge the gulf that lies between hope, or even content, and despair. Moreover, Corot's wants were few. Throughout his life he had the simplest tastes, and his only extravagance was a charity that gave without measure and never thought about return.

However, figure to yourself Corot fully embarked on his career as a painter. He is, roughly, twenty-five years of age, and for stock-in-trade has glowing health, a certain familiarity with pencil and brush already acquired, an unquenchable enthusiasm, and so many francs a year. On the whole it is the outfit of a very happy and fortunate young man.

Once emancipated from the compulsions of drapery he lost no time in setting to work. He went straight to Nature, and even at this time produced work that bore a hall-mark as distinctive as that of his later years. He worked also in the studios of Michallon and of Bertin, and if they did him no good (and there is little reason to suppose such a thing), they at least did him no harm. Already he was too keenly engaged upon a line of his own.

Around Ville d'Avray, where his father had bought a house, he found numberless subjects ready to his hand, subjects of which nothing that he saw in his wide wanderings could ever make him tired. He also had an experience in Morvan. I shall venture to quote from Mr. Everard Meynell's "Corot and his Friends," concerning it. "He went, presently, to the little hamlet of Morvan, whose blacksmith gave him hospitality. As a member of a farrier's numerous family, with the forge for sitting-room, and its fires to assuage the cold of mortals and of metals, and soup for fuel, and the blue smock of the country for raiment, Corot saved money. He saved money out of the 1200 francs of his allowance; even the cost of canvas and paints did not bring his expenditure to three francs a day. His austerity meant Rome, but it was not a hard road for him to follow. Never was a man less provoked to any of the pampered ways of living."

"It was in Morvan that Corot picked up with the peasant, and found in him many things fit to be learned. He learnt about soups, and pipes, and blouses, and the habit of the sunrise; and nothing that he learned did he forget. Soups, and pipes, and blouses, and the sunrise lasted him till the end of his life. These things, like the honest humour and good-comradeship of a man afield, were in his blood; but Morvan and Morvan's blacksmith, and daily things done with the Morvan peasantry, developed the peasant in the painter. Corot's was nearer to the peasant's character than Millet's even; for the emotional gloom of Millet's outlook, his sense of the price paid for life, his sense of death and toil, of the significance of the seed and the scythe, made him a person too great and dreadful to be familiar with those for whom he thought and felt. Corot's laugh and song, his raillery and content, were things to be friends with."

I think that in the foregoing passage the influence upon Corot of the Morvan visit, though it may well have been a memorable one, has been perhaps a trifle exaggerated. Surely he must have "picked up" with the peasant long before, and found out how much he had in common with the dweller on the soil. And will the comparison with Millet fully bear examination? I doubt it. The extraordinary delicacy and refinement of Corot's vision is at least a thing as foreign to the peasant as the tense emotionalism of Millet; and I suspect that the deep-rooted content of the one was as much removed as the implicit revolt of the other from the people with whom in their several ways they were both so much in sympathy. That in personal relations Corot got nearer than Millet to his peasant friends is more than probable. If not more understandable in reality, he seemed so in daily intercourse with those as simple and direct as himself. There was nothing in him to repel. His gay and expansive nature invited a confidence that was seldom withheld, except by those too distrustful and secretive themselves to understand it.

The first visit to Italy, undertaken in 1825, marks an epoch in the life of Corot, as in that of many another painter. But though it widened his outlook, and taught him much that otherwise he might never have learned, it did not tempt him to any deviation from the simple principles that all through his life guided him in the practice of his art. All the inducements which Italy could offer were not sufficient to make him incline to use other eyes than his own when painting. He seems to have treated the Masters in an unusually cavalier manner. Nature in Italy interested him much more than Art in Italy: he was more concerned with sunsets than with Michael Angelo.

As was his custom, Corot was always at work in Italy, "sitting down" with his usual happy knack in finding the right spot, and painting what he saw as he saw it, with careful fidelity to his own beautiful way of looking at things. Sometimes he worked from models in his room, but whether indoors or out, day after day found him painting, painting with unabated enthusiasm and ever-fresh delight.

And he made friends, as always--among them d'Aligny, who was the first to take the true measure of the then somewhat awkward young man. "D'Aligny," says Mr. Everard Meynell, "was the discoverer of his genius and its advertiser; for having found Corot at work on the 'Vue du Colisée,' now hanging in the Louvre, he made a formal statement of his admiration at 'Il Lepre' (a café in Rome much frequented by painters) that night. 'Corot, who sings songs to you, and to whom you listen or call out your ribald chaff,' said he, 'might be master of you all!'"

The friendship lasted until the death of d'Aligny in 1874, and Corot never forgot the generous praise that had so encouraged him during those early days in Rome.

In 1827 Corot exhibited for the first time in the Salon. The two pictures which bore his name were not unnoticed, but no one was sufficiently interested to purchase them. It was indeed fortunate on the whole that he was assured of "shoes and soup" from other sources than his art, for it was not until 1840 that it brought him any monetary reward worth mentioning. But it would be beside the mark to say that he had to endure any remarkable period of neglect. It must be remembered that his career as a painter did not seriously begin until he was of an age when many artists have already secured something of a position for themselves. His work, too, was not of such a description as to make any sensational impact upon the attention of the art-loving public.

Before he returned from his first visit to Rome he had, however, made his mark in some measure, had been hailed by a few discerning critics as one of the elect. The enthusiastic testimony of d'Aligny and one or two others had been endorsed with signatures that carried some weight--only at home was he still held to be an amateur. His right to a place among the more notable artists of his time was no more questioned, except by those whom ignorance or prejudice had rendered incapable of sane judgment.

Once more, and again, he visited Italy, painting as he went, and what was much more to the purpose, filling with magic pictures the tablets of his mind: but I doubt if these subsequent visits carried him far beyond the point he had arrived at during the first. Each day he was gaining more knowledge and greater dexterity, but his point of view was never seriously modified. Italy gave to his delicacy some of its strength, invested the most tender-hearted of painters with the touch of sternness that could alone save his work from becoming invertebrate: but it could not materially alter his habit of vision, or turn into dramatic shape an inherently lyrical gift. He saw Nature as a song in France first of all and last of all; Italy only helped him to give the song a more severe metrical basis than it might otherwise have possessed. Much that was sweet in Corot it would seem that the relentless landscapes and pitiless skies of Italy helped to make strong.

From 1840 onwards one may say that Corot was steadily growing into fame. In that year two of his pictures were bought by public authorities, and thus, for the first time, an official imprimatur was set upon his increasing reputation. He never knew the feverish delight of awaking one morning to find himself famous. The value of his work was only very slowly recognised, and as his paintings attracted more and more notice a heavy fire of hostile criticism was opened upon them: with no more effect than to make him smile as he went upon his way.

Some of these egregious criticisms are so utterly beside the mark that it is difficult to believe them anything but the result of a wilful misapprehension on the part of the critics. They seem to be inspired by venom and spite when read to-day: but in their own time they probably fairly represented the serious opinions of many who thought they were defending legitimate art against a spreading anarchy. It is even possible that such as Nieuwerkerke, who, as Mr. Meynell records, was "overheard describing Corot as a miserable creature who smeared canvases with a sponge dipped in mud," honestly believed that he was administering a well-deserved castigation to a charlatan. It is more than likely that many of us are making mistakes almost as serious to-day, so we need not find such an attitude incredible.

There were other critics at this same period who were less hampered by preconceived notions, and came to a very different conclusion than those who were able to dismiss the whole Nature school with contempt as "pampered humbugs." Delacroix could see that Corot was not "only a man of landscapes" but "a rare genius," and he was not alone. Every year, as one masterpiece after another appeared at the Salon from the "mud-dauber's" brush, the general body of artists and art-lovers were more disposed to give him the rank that was his due.

In 1848 Corot was elected one of the judges for the annual exhibition by his fellow-artists. He himself sent nine pictures, and one of them, a "Site d'Italie," was purchased by the State. The following year Corot was again one of the judges, and in 1850 he was elected a member of the "Jury de Peinture." He had become a personage in the art-world of France. Already in 1846 he had been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, to the astonishment of his worthy father, who could not in the least understand on what grounds such an honour had been done to his failure of a son.

The history of Corot's following years there is no necessity to follow in detail. Like the years which had gone before, they were fulfilled with happy labour. He journeyed through the length and breadth of France, to Switzerland, and elsewhere, "finding landscapes" with that apprehensive eye of his, and recording them on canvas or on paper, or storing them in the pigeon-holes of a memory that in such matters never failed him. For the rest the record is one of a continually increasing appreciation of his work. It started in a very small circle, extending thence in ever-widening ripples. Almost imperceptibly his fame increased until he became an acknowledged master.

In view of the sums paid for many of them since, the prices he obtained for his pictures seem ridiculously small, but there is no reason to suppose that he was anything but well content with such material rewards as came his way. Indeed, so much to the contrary, for some time he looked upon the increasing prices which purchasers were willing to pay with a mild astonishment and a kind of humorous fear that it was too good to be true.

The slighting of his earlier work and the laudation excited by the later had precisely the same effect upon him--that is none at all. If one had asked him, I think he would have said both alike were out of perspective. And he would have spoken without any taint of bitterness: for, from the very first, he was both confident and humble.

Of the man Corot there are many portraits both in pen and pencil, that help to give an outward shape to the more intimate revelation of personality to be found in his work.

One of the most interesting is a portrait by the artist of himself as a young man. He is sitting, a burly, broad-shouldered figure, before his easel. The face looks out from the canvas square and strong, but the full-lipped mouth is sensitive, almost tremulous, and betrays the nature of the man even more surely than the alert eyes; though these eyes, on the pounce, one may say, and the forehead drawn in the intense endeavour to _see_--these also tell their own story.

A pen-portrait of later date by Silvestre describes the artist as "of short but Herculean build; his chest and shoulders are solid as an iron chest; his large and powerful hands could throw the ordinary strong man out of the window. Attacked once, when with Marilhat, by a band of peasants of the Midi, he knocked down the most energetic of them with a single blow, and afterwards, gentle again and sorry, he said, 'It is astonishing; I did not know I was so strong.' He is very full-blooded, and his face of a high colour. This, with the bourgeois cut of his clothes and the plebeian shape of his shoes, gives him at first sight a look which disappears in a conversation that is nearly always full of point, of wit, and matter. He explains his principles with great ease, and illustrates the method of his art with anything at hand; and that generally is his pipe. He so loves to talk about his practices in painting that, a student told me, he will talk in his shorts and with bare feet for two hours at a stretch without being once distracted by the cold."

Many photographs are in existence to present to us Corot in his autumn time. Says M. Gustave Geffroy, examining one of these: "The features are clearly marked. The brow, high and bare, crowned with hair in the _coup de vent_ style, is furrowed with lines. His glance goes clear, keen, direct, from beneath the heavy eyelids. The nose, short and fleshy, is attached to the cheeks by two strongly marked creases. There is a smile on the lips, of which the lower is very thick--altogether a good, intelligent, witty face." In general appearance, I may add, these later portraits of Corot always remind me of the late Mr. Lionel Brough.

To my mind there is something more in these photographs than M. Geffroy has called attention to. They are the portraits of a very happy man. A deep spiritual happiness and content make the old, wrinkled face a beautiful one. It is the face of one who, to use a lovely old phrase, "walked with God," and of whom it was said, "_c'est le Saint Vincent de Paul de la peinture_."