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On a visit to Corot's studio


From a journal entry dated March 14,1847:

“Gaspard Lacroix came to call for me and we went to Corot’s studio. He maintains, like one or two others, and they may be right, that in spite of my desire for method I shall always be swayed by instinct. Corot is a true artist. You need to see a painter in his own studio to gain any real idea of his merit. I saw there, and appreciated quite differently, the pictures which I had already seen in the Salon, where I liked them only moderately. His large Baptism of Christ is full of naïve beauties. His trees are superb. I spoke to him about the one I am about to do in the Orpheus; he told me to let myself go a little and to allow myself to take things as they come, so to speak, that is how he works most of the time … Corot goes deeply into a subject; his ideas come to him and he develops them as he goes along; this is the right way to work.”
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