Corot: Women
September 9 – December 31, 2018
West Building, Main Floor, Northeast Galleries
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
The Blonde Gascon, c. 1850
oil on canvas
overall: 40.01 x 30.16 cm (15 3/4 x 11 7/8 in.)
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Purchased with the Drayton Hillyer Fund
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
Camille Corot is best known as the great master of landscape painting in the 19th century who bridged the French neoclassical tradition with the impressionist movement of the 1870s. His figure paintings constitute a much smaller, less well-known portion of his work, but they appeared throughout his prolific fifty-year career, with particular force toward the end. Rarely seen outside his studio during his lifetime, these works made an impact on later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernist artists who copied or borrowed from them, such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque. Dressed in rustic Italian costume or stretched nude on a grassy plain, Corot’s women read, dream, and gaze directly at the viewer, conveying a sense of their inner lives. His sophisticated use of color and his deft, delicate touch applied to the female form resulted in pictures of quiet majesty. The forty-five paintings on display, created between the mid-1830s and the early 1870s, are largely divided into three major subjects: costumed single figures, nudes, and allegorical studio scenes.
The exhibition is curated by Mary Morton, curator and head of the department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington
Sponsors: The exhibition is made possible through the support of The Edwin L. Cox Exhibition Fund and Leonard and Elaine Silverstein.
Passes: Admission is always free and passes are not required
Attendance: 129,196
Catalog: Corot Women. By Mary Morton. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2018
Other venues: Musée Marmottan, Paris, February 8–July 22, 2018
- Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille
- French, 1796 - 1875
SlideshowFrench Neoclassical Tradition
SlideshowImpressionist Movement
EducationChannel Coast Postcards
Lessons & Activities
Lectures and Book Signings
Introduction to the Exhibition—Corot: Women
September 9 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium
Concert
Living Art Collective Ensemble (LACE) and Elisa Monte Dance, interLACEd: Corot and His Circle
September 16 at 3:30
West Building, West Garden Court
Lectures and Book Signings
Present Tense: Corot, Photography, and the Body
October 20 at 2:00
West Building Lecture Hall
- Present Tense: Corot, Photography, and the Body
- Audio, Released: November 13, 2018, (52:15 minutes)
- Introduction to the Exhibition—Corot: Women
- Video, Released: September 18, 2018, (50:40 minutes)
- Introduction to the Exhibition—Corot: Women
- Audio, Released: September 11, 2018, (50:40 minutes)
- Press Event: Corot: Women
- Audio, Released: September 5, 2018, (17:25 minutes)