"The young impressionists were shaking landscape art when the elderly Corot painted this placid, rustic moment. But far from seeing him as a conservative dullard, the French avant garde recognised his intensity and originality. Corot, born in 1796, ploughed his own furrow, painting silent, calm, poetic rural scenes that straddle the Romantic age and the early years of modernism. This painting may even be subtly influenced by the impressionist appetite for strong sunlight. It’s a tender hymn to the French countryside by an artist who loved his national landscapes as much as John Constable loved Suffolk.“
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