The Poet and His Muse (Le Poete et la muse)
Medium
cliché-verre
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection)
Accession Number
1967.18.35
Art Historical Context
In 1871, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Cor, the esteemed French landscape painter of the Barbizon School, created *The Poet and His MuseLe Poète et la muse)* using the rare medium of cliché-verre. This intimate print depicts a contemplative poet accompanied by his ethereal muse, evoking the Romantic ideal of artistic inspiration amid nature's quiet embrace. Corot, renowned for his poetic landscapes that bridged Realism and Impressionism, infused this work with his signature soft lighting and dreamlike atmosphere, late in his career when he increasingly explored intimate, literary themes. Cliché-verre...
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...