The Moored Boatman: Souvenir of an Italian Lake

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1861

We look across a lush landscape of olive-green forests lining a glimmering, silvery-blue lake with hills in the deep distance under a pale blue sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is painted with some visible and some blended brushstrokes to give it a hazy, soft appearance. A man wearing a red cap and a white shirt sits in a long, low, narrow boat with a pointed bow in the grasses along the shore, near the bottom center of the composition. Gnarled tree trunks, one to each side, frame the view beyond. Towering, leafy trees nearly fill the right half of the painting. To our left, the still surface of the lake leads back to a city painted almost in silhouette with flint blue, which is reflected in the surface of the water. Hills and mountains are painted in bands of lightening blue as they recede into the deep distance to our left. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition, and the pale sky above is veiled with soft white clouds. The painting is signed in orange letters in the lower left corner, “COROT,” and dated in the lower right, “JANVIER 1866.”
Artist
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Date
1861
Type
Painting
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
60.96 × 90.17 cm
Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Licence
Public domain, CC0

Image description

We look across a lush landscape of olive-green forests lining a glimmering, silvery-blue lake with hills in the deep distance under a pale blue sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is painted with some visible and some blended brushstrokes to give it a hazy, soft appearance. A man wearing a red cap and a white shirt sits in a long, low, narrow boat with a pointed bow in the grasses along the shore, near the bottom center of the composition. Gnarled tree trunks, one to each side, frame the view beyond. Towering, leafy trees nearly fill the right half of the painting. To our left, the still surface of the lake leads back to a city painted almost in silhouette with flint blue, which is reflected in the surface of the water. Hills and mountains are painted in bands of lightening blue as they recede into the deep distance to our left. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition, and the pale sky above is veiled with soft white clouds. The painting is signed in orange letters in the lower left corner, “COROT,” and dated in the lower right, “JANVIER 1866.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot