The master of living, breathing landscapes

One sometimes forgets when looking at French 19th-century art that the painting revolution that produced Impressionism coincided with a political one. This is because most French painters, Delacroix and Manet excepted, chose to ignore it — none more completely than Camille Corot, who, as a travelling view painter, had every excuse to get out of Paris when the musket balls started to fly. The July Revolution of 1830 found the 34-year-old artist heading north to Pas de Calais, where he painted a ‘Windmill near St Omer’ and two foreground cows with a bucolic breeziness worthy of Cuyp; the Paris Commune of 1871 found him back in the north, painting the peaceful countryside around Arras. When Manet was making lithographs of the barricades, Corot was making cliché-verres of woodland glades seen through poetic mists of memory. The most important quality in a view painter, said Corot, was ‘knowing how to sit’. Almost as important for a bon vivant was a hearty dinner and friendly company to come home to.