Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Le lac ; effet de nuit, ca 1869

 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Le lac ; effet de nuit, ca 1869
oil on canvas, 55,8 x 81,6
Musées de Reims

Corot very rarely painted nocturnal scenes, even when he created historical landscapes composed in the classical manner; and, when he tried, the result was often strange or offbeat, as in the flamboyant and romantic “Night Landscape with a Lioness” (Philadelphia Museum of Art), unfortunately little known, or in one of his beautiful ultimate works inspired by the theater, “Hamlet and the Gravediggers” (Copenhagen, Ordrupgaardsamlingen). However, in 1874, when he had decided to make a last and painful effort in order to obtain the gold medal at the Salon - which had been refused to him throughout his career -, Corot chose to send there a "Landscape au clair de lune” (private collection), with a truly Lamartinian inspiration, in order to prove the eclecticism of his talent. The poems of Alphonse de Lamartine appear to have particularly inspired Corot in his rare night scenes, the poet's famous “Poetic Meditations”, published in 1820, having obviously marked the generation of which Corot was a part. Extending his aesthetic reflections concerning the correspondences between the arts, Corot also sought to pictorially visualize "time suspending its flight" and the way in which a "flow" can be "attentive" - ​​to paraphrase Lamartine's famous and sublime text; his pictorial variations, imagined in the spirit of musical variations, could therefore also find an extension in the art of poetry. 

The painting in the museum, of which we unfortunately know neither the context of creation, nor the literary reference perhaps illustrated by Corot, must be analyzed in this spirit; from a very frequent composition in his work, one half of the painting being blocked by a curtain of trees - here the particularly dark right -, and another half being open towards the distance - here the left, which shows the reflections of the moon on the lake – Corot created a completely romantic poetic universe. Landscaper initiated in the classical tradition, marked by the indelible experience of Italy and always in search of the visual emotions provoked by his outdoor work sessions in all regions of France, Camille Corot proved in such a landscape that he easily managed to connect his work with that of the romantics. [V. Pomarede, 2009] via