His life was
long--he died February 22, 1875--and completely filled with his work.
After Corot's death, there was exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux Arts
in Paris a collection of several hundred of his pictures, and then,
perhaps for the first time, the genius of the man was profoundly felt.
To those who were inclined to undervalue the pure, sweet spirit which
shone through his work, and to complain of the representation of a
world in which no breeze stronger than a zephyr blew, in which the
birds always sang, and the shepherd piped to a flock unconscious
of the existence of wolves, there were shown efforts in so many and
various directions as to forever silence their reproach of monotony,
so often directed against Corot's work. There were landscapes, showing
the gradual emancipation, due to the most sincere study of nature,
hard and precise, in the early period; vaporous and filled with
suggestion, as the sentiment of the day and hour represented became
important to the painter, and his technical mastery became more
certain in later years. There were figures, none too well drawn from
the point of view of David or Ingres, but serving, to a painter whose
interest in atmospheric problems never ceased, as objects around
which the luminous light of day played, and which were bathed in
circumambient air.
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