You are here:  Home › Artists › Corot

Camille Corot

Born: Paris, 17 July 1796
Died: Paris, 22 February 1875
Nationality: French
Background: 

bourgeois – parents owned clothing shop

Studies: 

classical education at College de Rouen; with landscape painter Achille Etna Michallon (1821-22) and Jean-Victor Bertin (both pupils of Valenciennes); with Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny (Rome)

Career: 

1827 – Bridge at Narni and La Cervara (Kunsthaus, Zurich) exhibited at Salon; exhibits there regularly throughout his career

1840 – French state purchases Shepherd Boy (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Metz)

1846 – Charles Baudelaire and Champfleury write favorable Salon reviews

1849 – elected to Salon jury; serves on jury regularly throughout his career

1862 – paints with Gustave Courbet in Saintonge

Travels

Rome (1825-28; 1834; 1843); summers spent touring France; frequent visits to Switzerland; London (1862)

Commissions from: 

Ferdinand-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans; Napoleon III; Prince Demidov (Russia)

Important Artworks: 

Bridge at Narni , 1827 (National Gallery, Ottawa)

Orpheus and Eurydice, 1830 (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

Souvenir of Mortefontaine, 1864 (Louvre, Paris)

See Nadar's portrait of Corot