Self-Portrait (Corot par lui-meme)
Medium
cliché-verre
Dimensions
sheet: 21.2 x 15.7 cm (8 3/8 x 6 3/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection)
Accession Number
1967.18.15
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Step into the intimate world of Jean-Baptiste-Cille Corot's *Self-Portrait (Cor par lui-même)*, created in 1858. The renowned French artist, a master of luminous landscapes and a key figure in the Barb school, turns the lens on himself in this small-scale print measuring just 21.2 x 15.7 cm. Housed in the National Gallery of Art's Rosenwald Collection, it captures Corot at age 62, blending his poetic sensitivity with experimental flair. What makes this work stand out is its medium: *cliché-verre*, a rare 19th-century hybrid of drawing and photography. Corot drew directly on a glass plate with...
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...