Wil d'avre

In the National Gallery of Art (Washington) presented the landscape "Wil d'Avray" Camille Corot, one of the most subtle and poetic French artists of the XIX century.

We see the calm surface of the pond and some buildings (perhaps someone’s country estate) on the far shore, figurines of peasants merged into the landscape and occupying themselves with something habitual and everyday. And the foreground is given to one of Koro's favorite motifs - trees. In all likelihood, it is willow. Their Koro wrote often enough. It is even known that one of his landscapes called "Willows" in the 1st half of the twentieth century, Erich Maria Remarque presented his beloved woman Marlene Dietrich.

But the matter is not even in the objects depicted in the picture: they themselves are completely mundane. The point is in Koro's ability to make the landscape evoke in the viewer a feeling of peace and tranquility, so that the fullness of light and air at some point creates a feeling of grace dissolving in nature. So that from the bright harmonies of green, silver and ocher, they catch their breath.

Anyone who is at least a little familiar with the biography of Corot knows that the landscape was for the artist without exaggeration the meaning of existence. “My only and invariable goal, which I intend to devote all my life, is to paint landscapes,” - said Corot. And he was sure: “A person should not start an artist’s career until he feels passionate about nature".

In search of nature, Corot traveled a lot: we can see in his paintings the cities of Italy drenched in the blinding sun, the dense twilight forests of central France, and the tranquil lakes of Switzerland. But in order to write this landscape, Corot did not have to travel far: in the suburbs of Paris, in the area of d'Avray, his parents, the owners of a fashionable clothing store, had a villa acquired for the occasion from a rich Parisian banker. When it became finally clear that Camille does not want to continue the family business and is eager to be not a merchant of cloth, but an artist, his father entered generously. He then declared to Camil in the hearts "I can not stop you. Want to have fun - have fun! ” and could drive my son to free bread. But instead he gave him annual maintenance of one and a half thousand francs and allowed him to set up a workshop in the attic of a country house.

From the windows of the workshop of Corot in Wil d'Avray a pond was visible. And yet - some unkempt thickets. It is their Corot immortal.

Wil d'Avray will be the same for Corot than for Barbizon artists - the Fontainebleau forest. Corot will write wil d'Avres untouched by civilization again and again. Own "Pond in d'Avray" there is in the Museum of Fine Arts (Rouen) and in the State Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin (Moscow). In private collections you can find autumn variation already familiar to us - "Peasant woman from Ville d'Avre with a child between two trees on the bank of a pond", and etudes by Ville d'Avre (1, 2) are valued almost like paintings. Ville d'Avray has its landscapes in french reims, Scottish Edinburgh, american cincinnati.

Corot was fortunate in that his lyrical landscapes had become very popular during his lifetime. In the 60s-70s of the 19th century, everyone wanted to acquire the Corot, especially for some reason in the New World. Then Corot hired assistants who copied his paintings, and he only supplied them with his signature, so the problem of the authenticity of Corot is very relevant. French art critic and Louvre keeper Rene Yuig joked: “Corot painted 3,000 paintings, 10,000 of which were sold in the United States”.

Author: Anna Yesterday