Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Jean François Philibert Berthelier, Paris

Galerie Georges Petit, Paris 9 May 1889, lot 18 (consigned by the above)

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune (acquired from the above)

Samuel P. Avery, New York

James J. Hill, St. Paul, Minnesota (acquired from the above on 12 November 1897)

Louis W. Hill (acquired by descent from the above)

Maud Hill Schroll, San Francisco (acquired from the above by 1962)

Christie's, New York, 5 May 1998, lot 7 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, James J. Hill Collection, 1918, no. 40

San Francisco, California Palace Legion of Honor; Toledo Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; and Boston, Museum of Replica Handbags s, Barbizon Revisited, 1962-1963, no. 8

Alfred Robaut, L'Oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré, vol. II, Paris 1905, pp. 186-187, no. 510, illustrated

Robert L. Herbert, Barbizon Revisited, exh. cat., New York 1962, p. 87, no. 8 and p. 95, illustrated (titled Landscape with Cattle)

The present picture depicts cattle and sheep grazing in a field near the village of Marcoussis, about 10 miles southwest of Paris. It is late spring or early summer — the time when Corot regularly traveled in France and abroad to paint en plein air. To judge from the light, it is late morning or early afternoon.

Despite Corot’s technical observation of the details, the overall impression the picture makes is one of timeless and poetic ideality. Indeed, Corot emerged by the mid-1850s as the quintessential painter of poetic landscapes.

James J. Hill bought this picture in 1897 from Samuel P. Avery, the chief American dealer in New York and Paris at that time. Hill was among the greatest collectors of Corot in the world, rivaled only by Étienne Moreau-Nélaton and Henry Osborne and Louisine Havemeyer.