Life as a
professional artist

In 1823, Camille Corot graciously received his friends into his first artist studio, set up at 15 Quai Voltaire, near his family, within the beautiful setting of the Seine. Following in the footsteps of many French artists, he began to study the paintings in The Louvre. He received advice that he was never to forget from Achille-Etna Michallon, an established French landscape painter, “Look closely and be truthful in rendering nature.” After this mentor’s premature death in 1822, Corot moved on to the studio of Jean-Victor Bertin, a well recognized neoclassical landscape painter. It was during this time that Corot started combining the French neoclassical with the English and Dutch schools of realistic landscape art in his paintings.

In the early 19th Century, landscape imagery was perceived by the classical artists and art critics to be unworthy as the dominant subject matter in a painting.