Accession Number
1949/1.86

Title
Ville d'Avray: Boatman's Pond (Evening) [Ville d'Avray: L'Etang du Batelier (Effet du Soir)]

Artist(s)
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Object Creation Date
1862

Medium & Support
etching and drypoint on paper

Dimensions
3 1/8 in. x 5 1/16 in. ( 7.9 cm x 12.9 cm )

Credit Line
Gift of Carl Fredric Clarke

Label copy
Corot often came to his family's country home at Ville-d'Avray, about 10 miles west of Paris, where he enjoyed a comfortable life. His prints of sites in the vicinity induce a mood of reverie, with their idyllic touches, such as the man sitting passively in a boat and the cow grazing along the shore in the present print. Corot's loose manipulation of the etching needle evokes an impression of a definite time of day, suggesting particular qualities of light and atmosphere. Five years earlier Corot had made an etching of the same pond in the morning to illustrate a poem about this spot for a volume planned by his poet friend Edmond Roche. The artist abandoned this plate, instead supplying for the book this print with the effect of evening. Corot's interest in the luminosity of nature, which he shared with his colleagues at Barbizon, anticipated the emphasis on light and atmosphere in the work of the Impressionists.

Subject matter
A pastoral scene with cows and a boatman sitting in his boat along the edge of the pond.

Physical Description
The upper half of the picture is the sky, Corot's signature mark in the upper right corner. There are two trees with little foliage extending from the lower left corner up to the top of the image. To the right of those trees is the boat with a hunched figure sitting on the left side. A cow is on the other side of the boat, facing the right side of the image. There are trees with a lot of foliage in the center of the right half of the image just above the cow. There is grass all along the bottom edge of the image.

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
intaglio print

Additional Object Classification(s)
Print

Collection Area
Western

Rights
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Keywords
boats
cows (mammals)
landscapes (representations)
ponds (water)