Corot's Figures Are Without a Landscape at the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart 'Am Römerholz' Exhibition - WSJ.com

Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's 'Marietta (à Rome)' (1843).

French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) was one of the foremost landscape painters of the 19th century, on par with contemporaries such as English artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and baroque masters such as his compatriot Claude Lorrain (1600-82).

Loved by the bourgeois establishment of his time for his cheerful renderings of idyllic pastorals that resurrected an ideal antiquity, he won equal respect from younger painters, who adored the pungent immediacy of his rough sketches and studies that would later inspire impressionist art.

Known affectionately as 'Père Corot' in his later life, when his work grew in status in Paris's art circles, the majority of his more than 3,000 works represent neoclassic and romantic landscapes such as the 1826/27 painting "Bridge of Narni," showing the remnants of a Roman aqueduct set in a lush Italian valley, where several peasants and shepherds are taking a rest.

But while his sketches earned Corot the title of a pioneer of impressionism, artists such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) were more attracted to his portraits and figure paintings. Although much scarcer in number, the figure and portrait paintings are as convincing in quality as Corot's landscape work. In both genres Corot excels thanks to his mastery of color, shadow and light, and his prevalent use of somber and balanced tones, an effect he achieved by mixing his palette with silver.

A show named "L'armoire secrète" at the renovated Sammlung Oskar Reinhart "Am Römerholz" in Wintherthur, which will last until May 15, is focusing on Corot's figure paintings, which have been unduly neglected during the past decades. The last show that exclusively focused on Corot's portraits took place in 1962 at the Louvre in Paris. The Winterthur show will exhibit several dozen portraits and figure paintings, and exhibit some of Corot's notebooks with pencil sketches.

"Corot has always seen himself as a landscape painter and has thus contributed himself to the fact that scholars have ignored his figure paintings," said Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice, who curated the show. "While only a handful of friends were able to see many of his 300 figure paintings during his lifetime, interest from traders and collectors grew over time."

For a landscape painter such as Corot, the human figure was often not more than a piece of decorum that he would place next to a tree or ruin to add liveliness and movement to a landscape. In "The Road To Sevres" from 1858/59, which shows a dusty road peopled by a horse rider and a peasant, flanked by green pastures and overarched by a cloudy sky, the figures seem to be placed into the scene only to intensify the vastness of the sky and the lushness of the landscape.

But already during his first visit to Italy, Corot, a learned draper who gave up his profession in his mid-20s to pursue a career as an artist, started to undertake costume studies such as in his 1826/27 painting "Young Italian Woman from Papigno with Her Spindle." Although the oil painting looks more like a sketch, as the girl's face and body are rendered with apparent ease and lack the typical neoclassical accuracy, her red and blue costume, which is set against a gray, muddy wall, seems to shine intensively, giving the girl a fluorescent attractiveness.

While predominantly focusing on the fashionable landscape paintings that were demanded by the affluent gentry, Corot was well aware of the historical legacy of portrait painting and its status during the Italian renaissance and its importance for the Dutch school. Some of his later figure paintings are reminiscent of the renaissance portraits made by Leonard da Vinci (1452-1519) and the figure paintings of Dutch masters such as Jan Vermeer (1632-15). Corot's "Woman with a Pearl" (1858-68), combines the meditativeness of da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and makes obvious references to Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only is the jewelry the focal point of the painting, Corot also mimicks Vermeer's color palette, albeit in less stark tones as he remains consistent in his penchant for somber tones.

Many of his figure paintings may look somewhat stylized as they lack the free movement and expression of his more naturalistic landscape sketches. But there is an intense lyric compression at work that shows individuals who are deeply engaged in a solitary activity such as reading ("Italian Monk Reading" from 1826-28) or playing a musical instrument ("Monk with a Cello" from 1874).

While this may be due to the fact that Corot usually painted his portraits in a studio setting and clad his models in costumes, the choice of his subject matter also looks seemingly outdated to modern eyes. Yet, during Corot's time, which coincided with the rise of photography, these apparently simple and today cliche-laden motives were refreshingly new and extremely popular.

Corot's "Woman Reading in a Landscape" from 1869 seems utterly romantic and too sweet for contemporary tastes. But his 1850/55 rendering of the same motive, called "Girl Reading," which shows a young girl in a white blouse and dark overcoat, remains enticing. "Girl Reading" conveys a sense of ease and seriousness, as Corot is able to intimately zero in on the figure, while almost completely zooming out the landscape in exchange for a unidentifiable brown backdrop.

He does this again in one of his last paintings, "Young Girl Reading" from 1868, where the abstract, yellow-brown background seems to reflect the brooding mood of the reading girl. It is almost a complete reversal of Corot's typical landscape paintings, where figures tend to play a minor role. Here, the background and landscape serve to underline the meditative force of the young woman, who seems to have freed herself from the shackles of a narrowing environment, expressing an authentic individuality that would remain one of the key pursuits of Corot's successors.