Heads #2

1970

Corot builds the gently sloping silhouette of the mountain range with thin, transparent films of brown, gray, and blue paint in broad, visible brushstrokes. For the sky, he matches thick layers of blue, gray, and white pigment with expanses of paper prepared with a light base or ground coat of paint. Corot endows the stand of firs in the foreground with an unexpected calligraphic flatness and reduces the tree trunks to stems. His passion for painting out-of-doors in front of the subject—notably on three visits to Italy and several trips around France—earned him the reverence of subsequent generations of landscape painters, particularly the Impressionists.