Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Corot's studio;
His deceased sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, May 26-June 9,1875, lot 264;
There purchased by Comte Armand Doria (1824-1896), Château d'Orrouy (Oise);
His deceased sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, May 4-5, 1899, lot 115;
F. collection;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, March 27, 1953, lot 7.

A. Robaut, L'Oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré, Paris 1905, vol. II, p. 50, cat. no. 136, reproduced; vol. IV, p. 225;
A. Jullien, R. Jullien, "Les Campagnes de Corot au nord de Rome," in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XCIX, nos. 1360/1361, May-June 1982, pp. 189-190, 199, note 37;
V. Pomarède, Paris, in Corot, 1796-1875, exhibition catalogue, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1996-1997, p. 113, note 5, under no.  23, (English edition, p. 69, note 4).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting on paper has been mounted on to canvas, most likely by the estate of the artist or shortly after the death of the artist. There are hardly any retouches to the paint layer. They are faintly visible under ultraviolet light in the sky in the upper right and possibly in the upper center of the sky. In the landscape and cliff itself, only a small restoration in the lower left corner has been applied. The remainder of the picture is conspicuously unrestored and all of Corot's subtle touches and glazes in an unusually thin paint layer are in very good condition. The picture should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The town of Civita Castellana is situated on a plateau just off the ancient Via Flaminia, about halfway between Viterbo and Rome. Nestled among the Sabine Mountains, it originated as a pre-Etruscan settlement and was fortified in the early sixteenth century, when it served as a military base for Cesare Borgia. Among the French landscape painters particularly drawn to this site, with its picturesque cliffs and gullies, were Corot's mentor Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld, who executed some ten paintings of the town beginning in 1787.

During Corot's first trip to Italy, the artist worked twice at Civita Castellana, first between early May and June of 1826 in the company of Johann Karl Baehr, and again during September and October of the following year, when he traveled with Léon Fleury. There in the open air he drew and painted much of the local topography, including the present composition which, according to André and Renée Jullien (see Literature), depicts the ocher cliffs of tufa stone that constitute the town's eastern flank. The present work's view was probably taken from Albergo di Tre Re, in which Corot is believed to have stayed during both visits. Incorporated in recent years into a ceramics factory, the building stood facing the western approach of an old bridge with three arches, no longer extant, that traversed the Treja river, on a road that led north toward the town. This same hotel is visible to the left in a pen and ink drawing, by the Dutch artist Gaspar van Wittel (Vanvitelli), now in the Palazzo Reale at Caserta.¹

 

1.  For an illustration of that work, see, Gaspar van Wittel (1652/53-1736), Gaeta, Palazzo De Vio, exhibition catalogue,1980, p. 125, no. 53).