Hermit's Woods (Le Bois de l'ermite)
Medium
cliché-verre
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection)
Accession Number
1967.18.17
Art Historical Context
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Cor, a leading French landscape painter of the 19th century, captured the serene beauty of nature in *Hermit's Woods (Le Bois de l'ermite)*, created in 1858. Renowned for his poetic Barbizon-style works that bridged Neoclassicism and Impression, Corot often depicted tranquil forests and rural scenes, evoking a sense of quiet introspection. This piece, housed in the National Gallery of's Rosenwald Collection, invites viewers into a secluded woodland glade, suggesting the solitary retreat of a hermit amid dappled light and foliage. The artwork's medium, cliché-verre, marks...
About the Artist
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, born on July 16, 1796, in Paris to a prosperous bourgeois family—his father a former wig-maker turned draper and his mother a successful milliner—was initially apprenticed in the textile trade but pursued art from his mid-twenties with family support. He studied under the neoclassical landscapist Achille Etna Michallon in 1821–1822, who taught him to sketch outdoors in...