If Claude Monet is referred to as "The Father of Impressionism," it follows that Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is it's "Grandfather."

Long before Impressionism had a name, Corot was quietly redefining what landscape painting could be. To the young "impressionist" painters who would soon up-end French art, Corot was not merely an admired elder but a living bridge between academic tradition and something freer, more modern.

Claude Monet has been repeated and paraphrased by contemporaries a having said on multiple occassions, “There is only one master, Corot. We are nothing beside him, nothing!” This statement along with many similar ones record Monet's depth of admiration of Corot, even though the exact wording has been lost over time.
Camille Corot was 44 years when Claude Monet was born. By the time the Impressionists were finding their way, Corot had already spent decades painting directly from nature, working outdoors, and developing a style built on silvery tonal harmonies and atmospheric unity.

When the Impressionists came along, Corot was generous to them, offering encouragement, advice, and financial help. The Impressionists did not copy Corot, but they held him in high regard - and borrowed his sensitivity to light, air, and mood as they created a more radical visual language.

Corot was closely associated with the Barbizon painters, a loose group who gathered near the Forest of Fontainebleau beginning in the 1830s. They shared a belief that nature itself was a worthy subject, without mythological or historical disguise, and that truthfully observed landscape could be both serious and poetic.

Théodore Rousseau treated the forest with monumentality and reverence; Jean François Millet brought dignity and gravity to rural peasant labor; Charles François Daubigny favored rivers and low horizons, painting with a looseness that directly influenced Monet. Within this circle, Corot added his lyricism. Where others emphasized structure or labor, Corot sought harmony and mood.

Théodore Rousseau was the anchor of the Barbizon painters. He treated the landscape with reverence, as something enduring and monumental.

He was among those artists who pulled landscape painting out of the studio and into the real world. He rejected the idealized scenery favored by the Paris Salon and devoted himself to painting nature as he experienced it, especially the ancient trees of the Forest of Fontainebleau, which he treated with near-human dignity.

His patient, direct observation gave landscape new seriousness and emotional depth, and his example helped pave the way for Corot and the Impressionists, making Rousseau an essential bridge between Romanticism and modern landscape painting.

Jean-François Millet turned his attention to figurative painting, showing the beauty and dignity of peasant laborers, deeply human paintings with spontaneous and quick brushstrokes.

He brought the everyday lives of rural people into the center of serious art. He treated peasant laborers with gravity and dignity, showing them at work in fields and barns with an honesty that felt radical in its time. Millet’s paintings exhibit Millet's close observation of rural life, blending realism with a restrained, almost monumental sense of form.

His influence reached far beyond Barbizon, shaping later Realist and Impressionist artists, especially Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Millet helped expand the idea that modern life, even in its humblest forms, was worth giving all classes artistic attention.

Charles-François Daubigny mostly painted rivers and waterways, flowing scenes of the Seine and the Oise Rivers. Often, he painted from a floating studio, an idea later borrowed by Claude Monet.

Daubigny helped make landscape painting a more spontaneous, modern art form. He favored rivers, ponds, and low horizons, often working quickly outdoors to capture shifting light and atmosphere, sometimes from his famous studio boat on the Seine and the Oise.

Daubigny’s loose brushwork and broad tonal harmonies broke with academic finish and made nature feel immediate and lived-in rather than staged. His approach had a direct impact on younger artists, especially Monet who admired his freedom and carried his plein-air methods into Impressionism, making Daubigny an important link between the Barbizon painters and the Impressionists.

And then came Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Where Rousseau was powerful, Daubigny was pastoral, and where Millet was monumental, Corot was lyrical.

His landscapes often feel hushed, yet musical, bathed in silvery light. His paintings are softened as if they were a fond memory rather than a technically well-recorded scene. Corot wasn’t chasing drama, he was creating atmosphere.

Overall, the Barbizon painters believed nature was a worthy subject by itself, with no need for historical or mythological subjects. They chose to paint directly from life, outdoors, and they valued truth over polish. They were interested in weather, the time of day and the changing of seasons

Together, the Barbizon painters were a community of artists who validated each other's instincts and ideas. For Corot, he wanted to establish that realism and poetry could coexist on the canvas.

Forest of Fontainebleau reflects Corot at a formative moment while he was discovering the expressive possibilities of painting directly from nature. The dense trees and uneven forest floor are rendered with a fresh, attentive eye, emphasizing observation over polish. Here, light filters irregularly through the foliage, and the scene feels immediate and unidealized, more encountered than composed. Long before his later, poetic visions, Corot was already redefining how nature could be painted honestly, grounded, and quietly radical for its time.

A View nar Voterra turns an unremarkable moment into something quietly poetic. The lone horseman is no one special, just a passerby absorbed into the landscape itself, moving at the same unhurried rhythm as the trees, sky, and earth. Corot makes the rider a measure of scale and time rather than the focus of a narrative. The painting is less about the man and where he is going, and more about the experience of being there, a deep, timeless connection between human life and nature.

Souvenir de Mortefontaine is one of Camille Corot’s most poetic and inward-looking landscapes, a work less about a specific place than about the feeling of remembered nature. Although Mortefontaine was a real village north of Paris that Corot visited often, this scene is carefully composed in the studio, blending observation with memory.

The silvery light, still water, and softly silhouetted trees create a hushed, contemplative mood, while the small, almost incidental figures remind us of humanity’s quiet presence within nature rather than dominance over it. By this late stage in his career, Corot had moved beyond strict topographical accuracy, favoring atmosphere, tonal harmony, and emotional resonance.

Painted in 1866, The Church of Marissel, near Beauvais captures Camille Corot’s fascination with the quiet dignity of rural architecture set within the natural landscape. Rather than focusing on precise architectural detail, he emphasizes atmosphere and the way structures sit harmoniously within their environment. The muted palette and calm composition create a contemplative mood, inviting viewers to pause and reflect. In this work, Corot demonstrates how even a simple village scene can be transformed into a poetic, timeless study of place, blending observation with memory.

L’étang de Ville-d’Avray draws on Camille Corot’s deep personal connection to the ponds near his family home outside Paris. He knew this landscape intimately. The pond lies low and still, anchoring the scene, while trees and sky melt into one another through subtle tonal shifts rather than firm outlines. Small figures appear almost as afterthoughts, reinforcing the sense of scale without interrupting the calm. More than a depiction of place, the painting conveys a lifelong conversation between the artist and this cherished landscape.

The Bridge at Mantes captures Camille Corot’s mature vision of the French landscape along the Seine, where architecture and nature exist in calm balance.

In its composition, this painting is similar to his Le Pont de Narni 1826 (pictured later in this article), done over forty years earlier. Rather than emphasizing activity or drama, Corot slows the scene to a quiet rhythm, allowing atmosphere and tonal unity to shape the viewer’s experience. Buildings, water, and sky are gently simplified, their forms held together by subtle gradations of light rather than sharp detail.

Painted in 1872, Le Parc des Lions, Port-Marly shows Camille Corot at the height of his late-career mastery, transforming a familiar riverside park into a serene meditation on light and space. The scene is gently structured, with trees, pathways, and water arranged to guide the eye effortlessly through the landscape, while soft, silvery light unifies the composition. Figures appear sparingly, almost as whispers within the environment, emphasizing the park’s quiet atmosphere rather than human activity. Rather than documenting a specific moment, Corot distills his decades of observation into a harmonious, lyrical vision, blending memory and perception.

Italy held a lifelong pull for Camille Corot, both artistically and emotionally. His first extended stay there from 1825 to 1828 was especially transformative, giving him an opportunity to spend years studying the Mediterranian light, landscape, and ancient sites. Wandering in Rome and the surrounding countryside, Corot painted directly from nature, absorbing the clarity of Italian light and the harmony between ancient ruins cast amid natural trees, sky and Mediterranian light.

The Castel Sant'Angelo (Castle of the Holy Angel) was an ancient fortress built on the banks of the Tiber. Emporer Hadrian (Rome's emporer from 117-138 AD) commissioned it to be his mausoleum. Later, popes used it as a prison and fortress castle. Today, it is a museum. The history of this structure fascinated young Corot. Here, Corot captures this ruin in luminous light, couching the history in its natural setting.

Painted a few years later, Le Pont de Narni shows how deeply Corot’s Italian experience continued to shape his vision. The scene shows a massive Roman bridge near Narni set within a sunlit Umbrian landscape. The ancient monumental bridge is gently integrated into its natural landscape. The big shoulders of the bridge are softened by foliage, open sky, and the warm Italian light that Corot had come to love. Scenes like this helped Corot to evolve and refine a poetic realism that would become central to his mature work.

Italian Landscape in the Roman Campagna brings Corot’s Italian journey to a quiet, expansive close, focusing not on famous monuments but on the timeless countryside surrounding Rome. Corot gives his attention to the light and space, the way warm air softens edges, how forms dissolve gently into one another, and how the landscape seems to breathe in slow rhythm. Corot's time in Italy freed him from strict academic formulas and helped him develop poetic realism.

Corot painted scenes of this bridge several times. The Bridge at Narni was done from sketches made on site. This finished painting was done in his studio, and is larger than Le Pont de Narni (shown above). This painting was submitted for Corot's debut submission to the Paris Salon. The great Roman bridge still anchors this scene, but Corot's emphasis shifts toward atmosphere and balance using broad planes of light and shadow, softened contours, and a calm, measured rhythm across the landscape. The figures, indistinct, show a human presense in the context of both the natural scene and history.

Morning in Venice is a hushed, lyrical vision, like an awakening mood. This scene was painted after Corot had returned to France from his last visit to Italy. He remembers Venice bathed in pale morning light with its familiar architecture emerging softly from mist and water. The architecture and atmosphere seem to breathe together. Gondolas and distant figures are reduced to quiet accents, giving this painting a sense of calm before the city fully stirs. Artistically, this painting shows Venice not as a rare spectacle, but as a quiet moment suspended in time.

Although Corot is best known for landscapes, he did produce a small, remarkable group of portraits and figure paintings, usually done for private clients.

These images included a quiet women reading, contemplative monks, mythic figures stripped of theatricality. They are unified by subdued light, muted color, and possess an inward, reflective tone. Whether a studio model or an imagined classical figure, Corot treated people as he did trees and water: as vessels for mood rather than narrative. The sitter’s identity matters less than the feeling of stillness and presence.

Painted in 1845, Young Woman in a Pink Skirt shows Corot at a mid-point in his career, already interested in quiet, thoughtful figures rather than grand stories. The young woman sits simply against a plain background, her relaxed pose and lowered gaze giving the scene a calm, introspective mood. Corot's colors are soft and restrained, letting the warm pink of the skirt gently draw the eye without overpowering the figure. With blurred edges and subtle shifts in tone, he creates a sense of stillness and intimacy that hints at the poetic, modern feeling his later work would become known for.

Monk in White, Seated, Reading reflects Corot's quiet fascination with figures absorbed in thought, a theme that runs gently through his later work. The white-robed monk sits alone, fully focused on his book, rendered with soft light, muted tones, and a calm, unhurried brushwork that emphasizes mood over detail. Here, contemplation itself becomes the subject. The result is an intimate, meditative image that invites viewers to slow down and share in the monk’s silent moment of reading.

Painted in 1860, The Repose is a good example of Corot’s later style, where figures and landscape feel gently woven together. A nude woman lies at ease in a sunlit countryside, meeting the viewer’s gaze while everyday activity continues quietly in the distance. Corot softens everything—the figure, the trees, even the light, using subtle tones and blended brushwork so nothing feels sharply defined. Rather than telling a clear story or making a grand statement, the painting invites us into a calm, dreamlike moment, his deep sense of harmony between people and nature.

Corot painted Woman with a Pearl later in his career in 1869. At this time, he was especially drawn to quiet, intimate images of women rather than formal portraits. Here, the sitter turns gently toward the viewer, her calm expression and soft gaze creating a sense of mystery. Corot uses a muted range of silvery grays and warm browns, keeping details loose so the mood matters more than exact likeness. Earlier in his career, he spent considerable time in Italy where he studied Renaissance art, expecially the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci.

A Woman Reading shows a woman quietly absorbed in her book while a peaceful countryside stretches behind her. Corot was in his seventies when he showed this painting at the Salon of 1869. Critics praised its soft colors and sincere mood, noting how unusual it was for him to paint people in a thoughtful scene that draws you into the sitter’s calm moment of reading.

I wonder what he would have thought of such a title. He never wrote a manifesto of his place in art history. All he left behind were bits of his thoughts, in letters and rememberances from his friends and pupils. The rest we must surmize from his paintings.

In the mid 1820's, he wrote his friend Abel Osmand,

“I have only one goal in life that I want to pursue faithfully: to make landscapes. This firm resolution keeps me from a serious attachment. That is to say, in marriage." And he stayed true to this statement, he never married or fathered children.

These quotations give us a glimpse of his philosphy of painting

-- “Don’t imitate, don’t follow the others, or else you will lag behind them.”

-- “Listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling…”

-- “The most important things in a painting are Form and Value. Color comes last — like a friend you welcome."

-- “Never lose the first impression which has moved you."

One of the joys of running an historic art gallery is occasionally people ask about their paintings. Recently, the grandson of a Hollywood movie director contacted us about his grandfather's 18" x 24" Streets of Tonopah (Nevada) c 1950 by Joshua Meador. It seems his grandfather and Joshua Meador may have been friends, and this painting was in the grandfather's estate when he died in the 1980's.

I asked ChatGPT if it could identify the buildings, and voila, in an instant, like magic, I learned that the large building is the Tonopah Mining Exchange Building located at the intersection of Main Street and Brougher Avenue in Tonopah. The building was the center of Tonopah's Silver Boom at the beginning of the 20th century.

The painting is an amazing mixture of realism blended with stylization of the decaying buildings. It demonstrates Meador’s skill in translating his cinematic understanding of light, composition and movement into a still medium. So far, the owner does not wish to part with the painting, but maybe someday it may grace the walls of our gallery.

-- The UC Davis Bodega Bay Marine Laboritory located on Eastshore Road is open for docent led public tours on Fridays. The Lab is engaged in a variety of research centering on ocean and coastal health, and hands-on educational programs have been training the nation’s next generation of leaders in marine science and policy. https://marinescience.ucdavis.edu/bml/visiting-bml

HIKING FANS ... Bodega Bay has a new Bayside Trail. A stretch of California Coast is now open for the first time in 100 years. See the San Francisco Chronicle.