1830
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
La Cervara, the Roman Campagna is a 1830 unspecified by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, a Barbizon school work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a quiet valley near Rome at dusk. The sky glows pink behind rolling hills. A winding road leads your eye into the distance. Corot built the scene with careful diagonal lines. He painted this in his studio, not outside, using sketches he made earlier. The colors feel soft but controlled. See how the light fades into shadow? You’ll find this in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Corot based his large oil painting on drawings and oil sketches made outdoors. Attracted to the beauty of the Italian countryside, he often sketched around Rome, where he lived from 1825 to 1828. This painting's highly structured composition, based on forms moving into the distance along a series of diagonals, is characteristic of Corot's early style and recalls the classical landscapes of 17th-century painter Nicholas Poussin.
In 1845, the French poet Charles Baudelaire proclaimed Corot the leading painter of the modern landscape.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (UK: KORR-oh, US: kə-ROH, kor-OH; French: ; 16 July 1796 – 22 February 1875), or simply Camille Corot, was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching.
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