“THERE IS ONLY ONE MASTER HERE— COROT” (CLAUDE MONET): FOUR-VOLUME CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF COROT’S WORKS, WITH SUPPLEMENTS, INTENDED TO IDENTIFY FORGERIES
(COROT, Jean-Baptiste-Camille) ROBAUT, Alfred and MOREAU-NÉLATON, Étienne. L’Oeuvre de Corot… Catalogue Riasonné et Illustré. Paris: H. Floury, 1905. Four volumes with supplements and index, six volumes altogether. Folio (11-1/2 by 15 inches), modern half maroon morocco gilt, raised bands, maroon linen boards, top edges gilt, uncut (original front wrappers bound in).
Limited first edition, combined numbers 14 and 22 of only 400 sets (one of 25 copies printed on Japon Shizuoka paper), of this complete catalogue of the works of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, leading painter of the Barbizon School and key figure in both the Neoclassical tradition and the Romantic movement toward Realism. The catalogue was intended to distinguish Corot’s original paintings from literally thousands of contemporary forgeries.
Seen today as a pivotal figure between Neoclassicism and Realism, Corot was closely aligned with the Barbizon School of landscape painting, but never felt entirely at home with its “romantic idealization of the countryside as a form of escapism from urban banality… Yet, although he continued to make studied compositions after his sketches done directly from nature, he brought a new and personal poetry in the Classical tradition of composed landscape and an unaffected naturalness which had hitherto been foreign to it” (Nicolas Pioch). For example, Corot was not above combining peasant figures with mythological ones in the same painting, causing one critic to lament, “If Corot would kill, once and for all, the nymphs of his woods and replace them with peasants, I should like him beyond measure” (Tinterow, Pantazzi, and Pomerède). A strong market for Corot’s works during his lifetime led to a huge outburst of forgeries between 1870 and 1939. “René Huyghe famously quipped that ‘Corot painted 3,000 canvases, 10,000 of which have been sold in America” (Tinterow, et al). Corot’s cavalier attitude toward copying actually encouraged forgery (Marc Fehlmann). He allowed his students to copy his works, which he would then touch up and sign. According to Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, who produced this catalogue, at one copying studio alone, “the master’s complacent brush authenticated these replicas with a few personal and decisive retouching. When he was no longer around to finish his ‘duplicates,’ they went on producing them without him.” This very catalogue of Corot’s works was undertaken in an attempt to separate copies from the originals, but the purpose backfired when “forgers used it as a guide to refine their own bogus paintings” (Tinterow, et al). Despite controversy, artistically Corot simply adhered to the advice of his teacher Achille-Etna Michallon, “to reproduce as scrupulously as possible what you see in front of you,” compelling impressionist Claude Monet to insist, “There is only one master here— Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing.” Text in French. With both supplements (bound together) and separately bound index. Freitag 2236.
A fine set, handsomely bound, with only a bit of soiling to original tipped-in wrappers.