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Reforming paysage historique : Corot and the generation of 1830
Author(s) -
Greenberg Susan
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.433_3.x
Subject(s) - painting , wilderness , naturalism , salon , parallels , art , art history , environmental art , narrative , landscape painting , natural (archaeology) , history , visual arts , literature , performance art , contemporary art , archaeology , philosophy , mechanical engineering , ecology , epistemology , engineering , biology
This article examines the relationship between French landscape painting and naturalism in the years immediately following the Revolution of 1830. It explores new conditions for the production and reception of art and how these changes affected the innovative landscape paintings by the ‘generation of 1830’– ambitious artists like Camille Corot and Théodore Rousseau. The focus of the article is Corot's acclaimed Salon painting Hagar in the Wilderness (1835), which reflects critically on ‘nature’ and naturalism as they came to be defined in the period. In this painting, Corot renewed the genre of paysage historique , deemed an obsolete and highly ‘unnatural’ mode of landscape painting by 1830, and, in doing so, he created a complex natural world through recourse to narrative and history. The painting parallels contemporary perceptions of the cholera epidemic in Paris, echoing themes of displacement, dislocation, illness and disconnection.