Review: Corot Author(s): Marjorie Munsterberg Source: Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 1, Uneasy Pieces (Spring, 1992), pp. 113+115 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777262 . Accessed: 05/06/2011 08:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org Corot MARJORIE MUNSTERBERG PeterGalassi. Corotin Italy: Open-AirPainting and the Classical-LandscapeTradition. New Havenand London:Yale University Press, 1991. viii + 258 pp.; 105 color ills., 200 black-and- white. $55.00 of an alcoholic,a sexuallyaroused or inhibited,or eter Representative of our attitude toward Galassi'sCorot in Italyis yet another an unfulfilledpersonality. The biographer'srole beautifullyproduced Yale University Press Corot'sart is that chestnut of the nineteenth- should be to enrich understandingand help the book that transformsour view of nine- century art-history survey, the comparison of viewer find deeper meaning in the work, rather teenth-centuryEuropean painting. His subject is Corot'soil sketch of the ruined bridge at Narni than to take the easier "low road"to popularity. specific: the landscape sketches that Jean- (Louvre,Paris) with his oil paintingof the same Only such a judiciousmerging of personalhistory Baptiste-CamilleCorot (1796-1875) made out of subject (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), and artisticanalysis will bridge the gap between doors in Italy,especially those painted duringhis shown in Parisat the Salonof 1827. GermainBazin the popularand the highbrow-a gap that seems first stay (1825-28). But the ramifications of surely expressedthe reactionof most twentieth- to become wider and deeper with the passing Galassi'sargument extend far beyondthese works century viewers when he wrote about the pair: of time. by Corotand, in fact, beyond Corot himself.The "Whilethe study is a marvelof spontaneity, al- evidence the author gathers and the case he readycontaining the germ of Impressionism,the Notes makes from it dramatically change our ideas ambitiouscanvas is a mediocreexercise of a Neo- 1. JanGarden Castro, The Art and Lifeof GeorgiaO'Keeffe (NewYork: Crown, 1985). about the traditionof open-air landscape paint- classicalstudent" (p. 6). Galassicontinues: 113 2. NaomiRosenblum, "Paul Strand: The EarlyYears. 1910- ing, French academic studio practice, and the Th[is] image of conflict between genuine per- 1932"(Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center of the CityUniversity of transformationof landscape as an artisticgenre NewYork, 1978). sonal expressionand inheritedacademic rules has duringthe nineteenth century.His conception of 3. Eisler'snote indicatesthat the letterin whichthis phrase remaineda staple of Corotcriticism. It allows the was written Anita to on Corot'sartistic originality is also important,for it appears by Pollitzer O'Keeffe January moderncritic to dismissthe greaterpart of Corot's 1,1916,and cites Giboire as the source.The letter, as reprinted offers rich possibilitiesas a paradigmfor other effort as a capitulationto conventionaltaste, and in part in Anita Pollitzer,A Womanon Paper: Georgia nineteenth-centuryartists: thus to O'Keeffe,The Letters and Memoirs of a LegendaryFriendship identify the remainder-Corot's work (NewYork: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1988), 120, does The originalityof [Corot's]work arose not from from nature-with the authentic tradition of not containthe phrasein question.Robinson excerpts the impatiencewith traditionbut fromdeep devotion modern art (p. 7). letter (pp.128-29), reprintingthe partabout Stieglitz's reac- to it ... [lt] belongs to a moment, now obliter- tionto the drawings,but without the phrase"Finally a woman Such readingsof Corot'scareer, and the ated, when the unfolding of tradition was no on paper."In discussing this letter, both Castro (p. 31) and Lisle of in history landscape painting they assumed, (p. 83) agreethat there are problemswith the phrase.Lisle longer the hands of the academy, but when were contradicted dramaticallyin 1930, when notesthat it is an addition;Castro reprints the letterin full, commitmentto traditionwas not yet an obstacle the Louvre received a bequest of several hun- includingthe phrase,but indicatesthat it probablywas ap- to originality(p. 227). pendedlater and in a differenthand. Giboire reprints the letter dred drawings by Corot's teacher Achille-Etna withthe phrase(p. 115),without noting its problems. These are arguments worth rehearsingin detail. Michallon (1796-1822) and many landscape 4. Thereis no indicationin textthat the Archive Eisler's Stieglitz Galassibegins his book with a historyof studies by the neoclassical landscape painter containscorrespondence between O'Keeffeand Stieglitz, Corot'sreputation. Like many others who came to Pierre-Henride Valenciennes(1750-1819). The consistingof many lettersthat she was unableto consult the trainedwith becauseit hasbeen sealed until 2021. By omitting this fact and scholarlymaturity during 1980s, latterespecially overturned much of the conven- statingthat the BeineckeLibrary opened a sealedpackage for revisionistreadings of nineteenth-centuryart, the tionalwisdom about the traditionin which Corot her,she leavesthe unsuspectingreader to assumethat she had author is quick to look beneath the familiarart- was trained.Galassi notes that, after seeing them access to all the materialavailable. That she did not was historicalpersona for long-buriedhistorical con- that year, RendHuyghe wrote: ascertainedin conversationwith PatriciaC. Willis,curator of texts and This is fruitful the Collectionof American Beinecke Yale meanings. especially in Literature, Library, Corotremains a poetic miracle, but no longer a University,New Haven,October 21, 1991. Corot'scase, for his artisticreputation has never historical miracle. Valenciennes, in his official 5. Willismaintains that the BeineckeLibrary made an adminis- encompassed all of his work. Galassiexplains: is associated trativedecision to openthe sealedcorrespondence. Conversa- role, with the most insipiddegenera- tionwith this author, October 21, 1991. The sense of Corot'sachievement [always] has tion of classical landscape; in his intimate work 6. Telephoneconversation with CalvinTomkins, September correspondedto the prevailing outline of prog- he directlyintroduces the young Corot,the Corot 1991. ress in nineteenth-centuryart. At any point the of Italy . Once Corot is linked with classical 7. JoAnn Baldinger, "Two Portraits Steeped in Controversy," election of part of work to the un- to [the Barbizon SantaFe Weekly,June 14-20,1991, 8. Corot's grand landscape, opposed painters], 8. Hartmann'scritical writings have been collectedin Harry folding of artistic progress has transformedthe everythingbecomes clear (p. 8). W. Lawtonand George Knox,eds., The ValiantKnights remainderinto a puzzling failure-of talent or in Galassiobserves: of Daguerre:Selected CriticalEssays on Photographyand the favored explanation, of nerve. In the most Profilesof PhotographicPioneers by SadakichiHartmann extreme formulation Corot was both a coura- [These] brief remarkscontain two original and (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1978); and Jane Weaver,ed., SadakichiHartmann: Critical Modernist (Berke- geous pioneer, for his outdoor painting, and a provocativeperceptions: that our understanding ley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1991). craven retrograde, for the Salon pictures he of Corot'swork is profoundly influenced by the 9. New York:Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. painted in the studio (p. 2). frame of referencein which it is considered,and 10. Boston: New York 1977. Graphic Society, that the appropriatecontext for Corot's Italian Inthis scheme, Corot'swork became a precedent landscapesis not what came after but what came forthe Impressionistsas well as an essentialpart of NAOMI ROSENB LU M, authorof A WorldHistory of before. Thisbook might fairlybe summarizedas andarticles on Paul Lewis and the development of French classical landscape Photography Strand, Hine, an applicationof these two perceptions (p. 9). othertopics in photography,is at workon a historyof painting,bridging the centuriesbetween Poussin womenphotographers. and C6zanne(pp. 6-7). Havingplaced both the artistand the ar- ARTJOURNAL gument historically-a very welcome means of tion of its historicalimportance. The zeal with The artisticconfidence of Corot's Italian introduction-the author turns to careful recon- which Corot