JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT | VIEW OF PARIS FROM THE BANKS OF THE SEINE, THE TOWERS OF NOTRE-DAME SEEN IN THE DISTANCE

Private collection, France;

Private collection, U.S.A.

M. Dieterle and C. Lebeau, Corot: Sixième Supplément, Paris 2018, p. 28, cat. no. 25, reproduced. 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is one of the most important landscape painters in 19th century France. His style absorbed that of the 17th century masters Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin while anticipating the Impressionist landscapes of the later 19th century. Corot's small-scale views, such as the present example, would have been painted en plein air, a technique that was rarer at the time but later embraced with enthusiasm by the Impressionist painters. Though at the time he used these oil sketches as preparatory works, his remarkable sense of light and soft, loose brushwork give them an air of modernity which makes them as appealing to today's viewer as his more finished compositions. 

Dieterle and Lebeau date the sketch to circa 1830, just after his first trip to Italy. At the time Corot was working on large scale Italian landscapes, based on studies from his travels, which he would present at the Salon; his first entry, in 1827, was a View at Narni. When he could spend time outside of his Paris studio, he would sketch in the local countryside, echoing his plein-air methods from Italy. In the case of the present work, however, he must have had time for a short walk along the Seine, finding a sense of serenity even within the city limits of Paris. 

This view is most probably taken from the right bank of the Seine beneath the Pont d'Austerlitz, looking up the river toward the Île Saint-Louis and Île de la Cité. The Pont d'Austerlitz, named for the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, connects the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the right bank to the Jardin des Plantes on the left; it was first constructed during 1801-1805, and received updates in 1854 and again in 1884-5. Given the date of the oil sketch to circa 1830, Notre Dame is depicted without the central spire, which was designed by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1859 and tragically destroyed in a fire in 2019.