Jean COROT

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (16 July 1796 – 22 February 1875) was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting: his work simultaneously referencing the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipateing the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

Of Corot Claude Monet exclaimed "There is only one master here — Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing." His contributions to figure painting are hardly less important; Edgar Degas preferred his figures to his landscapes, and the classical figures of Pablo Picasso pay overt homage to Corot's influence.