Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Galerie Georges Petit, Paris (no. 16418)

Robert H. Hirsch, Florida

Private Collection (acquired by descent from the above)

Brunk Auctions, Asheville, 14 March 2015, lot 429

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Painted in the penultimate decade of the artist’s life, this sober landscape by Camille Corot exemplifies the Barbizon painter’s predilection for quiet quotidian views of the French countryside. Two cows and an attendant figure linger in a wooded field along a river with a windmill in the far distance left of center. Much of the composition is given to a cloudy sky whose vast expanse registers the artist’s primary focus: nature.

The canvas is unlined and retains the original supplier’s stamp, Deforge et Carpentier, active from 1856 to 1863 at 8 boulevard Montmartre, a firm now recognized as a significant supplier to the Impressionists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.