Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

(possibly) Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 29 April 1882, lot 12 (as Route sous bois)

James Staats Forbes, London (acquired in June 1891)

With Galerie Brame & Lorenceau, Paris

With Alfred Daber, Paris

With M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 30 July 1953 (acquired from the above)

Elizabeth Randon Rice Farish, Houston (acquired from the above on 9 October 1953)

With Acquavella Galleries, New York (acquired by 1988)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

New York, Acquavella Galleries, XIX & XX Century Master Paintings and Sculptures, 1988, no. 2 (as Mountain Landscape Seen Through the Trees)

Alfred Robaut, L'Oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré, vol. II, Paris 1905, p. 196, no. 544, illustrated

XIX & XX Century Master Paintings and Sculptures, exh. cat., New York 1988, p. 2, no. 2, illustrated in color

Corot offers two parallel paths for the viewer’s eye, past the seated male figure at left along the dirt path through the trees or over the stone wall at right past the bent-over woman working in the field to the mountain in the distance. The dense fall foliage at left is beginning to change from yellow to brown as dwindling light pierces through breaks in the branches to illuminate the slender and sinuous tree trunks lining the walkway. The composition is also strikingly organized into the near foreground, middle fields and valley beyond, such that Corot structures the scene in bands that bring the viewer both across and through the pictorial plane.