View of Lormes
early 1840s
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
6 1/2 x 21 5/8 in. (16.5 x 54.9 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Mendelsohn, 1980
Accession Number
1980.203.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Camille Corot’s *View of Lormes* offers a quiet window into the French countryside during the early 1840s. A leading landscape painter of his generation, Corot often traveled through rural France, recording villages and natural scenery with a delicate touch. This small, elongated canvas depicts the village of Lormes nestled among rolling hills, its modest buildings and surrounding trees rendered in soft, harmonious tones. Painted in oil on canvas, the work showcases Corot’s signature approach: subtle gradations of light and atmosphere that evoke a sense of calm and immediacy. Though modest in...
About the Artist
Camille Corot · 1796–1875
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, born in Paris on July 16, 1796, into a prosperous bourgeois family—his father a former wig maker turned draper, his mother a successful milliner—initially resisted his artistic calling. After a lackluster education at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen and failed apprenticeships in business, he abandoned commerce at age 26, thanks to a generous parental allowance foll...