The long and inglorious early training he went
through, the discouragement of his father, the want
of appreciation by the public, and the many weary
years he had to wait before he was admitted to be
a master in his art, all tended to impress on him the
necessity of study ; and even up to within a com-
paratively short time of the end of his nearly eighty
years, he drew fi-om the nude at night every winter,
so that his hand might retain its power of drawing
correctly. Those, too, who have seen the earliest
work of Corot ^ will remember that it is laboured
and ' tiglit,' and even ' niggled,' that the drawing is
severe and the composition almost servilely classical.
And later, his pictures were sincere echoes of his
master, Aligny, and the well-known picture of
this artist, now hung in the dark at Fontainebleau,
shows many points of similarity with Corof s works.
Indeed when one examines the relation of Corot
to Aligny in his youthful pictures, no pupil need
be ashamed when he is accused of following his
teacher, for Corot simply accepted his master's
style until, after several years, he found he could
improve on it.
It is always an interesting question to those
practically engaged in painting to know what
methods of work and what colours were on the
palette of the great artists they admire. Some
painters are absurdly jealous of their palette being
known ; these are they who, having learned a trick
in painting, and profited thereby, are meanly
afraid to tell it to any one else. There are
painters who, for such reasons, refuse to allow any
one into their studios while they are engaged on
their canvases ; but great artists, with becoming
magnanimity, will tell anything that they know, for
the sake of helping others. That wonderful if
sometimes weird artist, Matthew Maris, told a
visitor the other day that the chief colour he used
was black, that he never used any of the umbers,
and he showed his palette, with which he was work-
ing on a very tender and exquisite landscape, and at
the time it contained only black, white, cobalt blue,
and a touch of vermilion.
Corot showed his palette to many people, and
although little has been written about it, there is
enough to show how he worked, and what pigments
he employed. Corot mixed his colours on his pal-
ette ; he always used the definite tones in each
colour, and in commencing his pictures used black,
white, and raw umber. As the writer has men-
tioned in another place,- Corot preferred half-
primed canvas, sometimes toned, and never strained
too tightly, as he could knock up the ' keys ' after-
^ In the Louvre, for example.
- The Magazine of Art for April 1888.
wards. Matthew Maris, too, it may be mentioned,
also prefers half-primed canvas. Corot put in the
composition of his pictures in the method of the old
masters, blocking them in with the three colours
mentioned, and heightening them with the siennas
or yellow ochre, if necessary. He thus got his high-
est lights and deepest darks, and toned them with
transparent colours afterwards. It is worthy of
remark that, as a rule, Corot and others of the
French School worked from dark to light — that is,
they laid their colours in at first heavier than they
required, and in their painting gradually caused
them to become lighter in tone. One famous sunset
sky by Theodore Rousseau was laid in with black at
first, and gradually worked up into its present golden
russet colour.
Corot seldom painted a picture right off. He
began it one day, put it away for a time, took it up
again, carrying it forward to get the effect, put it
aside once more until it dried, and then took it up
and painted it several times until it was completed.
When young at his painting, Corot walked back-
wards after he had painted a bit to see the eff^ect,
then he would return and again paint, and again
walk back, until, as he used to say, 'My first pic-
tures have caused me to take so many paces back-
wards and forwards, that eacli one represents over a
hundred miles.' But after much practice Corot was
able to paint at liis pictures without rising, and late in
life he said, ' I could mention certain pictures which
truly I never really saw until they had been signed,
framed, and paid for,' meaning that he had been
seated so close to his canvas, and felt so certain of
the value of his touches, that it never was necessary
for him to step back to look at his work as a whole.
This, however, is not a commendable practice until a
painter's knowledge is as extensive as was Corot's.
At another time Corot spoke to a friend about
his difficulty in sky-painting in a very interesting
monologue which is worth repeating in entirety.
' At first,' he said, ' I often felt sorely tried when
wishing to paint a sky from nature. I found the
clouds stealing off" too quickly. Stop ! said I, trying
to do as Joshua did with the sun ; but Joshua had
a command over the firmament which evidently I
had not ! My clouds continued to drive along the
sky, changing in colour and form, and setting one at
defiance by the rapidity of their alterations. One
morning,' he goes on, ' I went to them, calling in
my vexation, Norn d'une pipe ! remain there for a
minute before me, for I do not want to paint you
wrongly ! It is with shame I confess these trans-
ports, for after all a sky standing still is no sky at
all. The talent of the painter consists in rightfully
rendering the changing tints and majestic move-
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52
THE SCOTllSH ART REVIEW
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