Dance under the Trees at the Edge of the Lake

1865/1870

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Painter, French, 1796 - 1875

We look across a grassy expanse leading to a lake, with several women, tiny in scale, dancing under a grove of trees to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. Painted with soft, almost feathery brushstrokes of fern and moss green to suggest leaves, two massive trees nearly fill the right half of the composition. Three light-skinned women wearing voluminous togas over one shoulder link hands in a circle beneath the tree, near the lower center of the painting. Lit by the low sun, the woman to our left wears rose pink, the center woman shimmering yellow, and the third woman emerald green. Another women to our left, wearing sapphire blue, runs toward the trio with arms outstretched. A fifth woman wearing a scarlet-red skirt reclines near the tree trunks to our right. A low, rectangular box about the length of a dining room table sits on the grass between the trio and the reclining woman. A few brushstrokes suggest flowers or plants on the box. The lake beyond is painted with smooth strokes of pale apricot and shell pink. A bank of bushes or tall vegetation close to us to our left is painted with touches of forest and olive green, with pale yellow to capture light glinting off the uppermost leaves. Beyond it, and hazy in the distance to our left, a large white building is nestled high on a hill painted in tones of muted plum purple and flaxen gold. Pale, fawn-brown hills lead down to the water in the distance, farther back along the lake. A few thin clouds float in the ice-blue sky above. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes and touches, so some details are difficult to make out. The artist signed the work in the lower left corner: “COROT.”

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Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Roussel, Paris, by 1905.[1] (Roussel collection sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 25-28 March 1912, no. 28); (Arnold & Tripp, Paris).[2] (John Levy Galleries, New York); purchased 1919 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York;[3] bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Alfred Robaut lists the painting as in the Roussel collection in L'Oeuvre de Corot, 5 vols., Paris, 1905: 3:168, no. 1698, repro.
[2] "Sen. Clark's New Corot," American Art News 8, no. 9 (20 December 1919): 1.
[3] "Another Corot for Clark," American Art News 8, no. 10 (27 December 1919): 1.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1905

  • Robaut, Alfred, and Etienne Moreau-Nélaton. L'Oeuvre de Corot. Catalogue raisonné et illustré. 5 vols. Paris, 1905: 3:168, no. 1698, repro.

1925

  • Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part I. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 147, no. 104.

Inscriptions

lower left: Corot

Wikidata ID

Q46629379


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