Title: Lake and Boatman

Artist: Camille Corot

Landscape with Lake and Boatman 1839 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot French, Paris 1796–1875 Ville-d'Avray Oil on canvas At the 1839 Paris Salon, Corot exhibited this mature and idyllic painting as Le soir (The Evening). This title suggested that viewers appreciate the picture less as a description of a specific site than as a poetic invocation of a time of day. As such, the painter's mastery of light effects was crucial to its success. "The evening, especially," wrote one admiring critic, "and precisely the infinite sweetness and softness already the ground and water float in a vague and hazy light; in soft shadows, the cottage and trees sky still retains a trace of the setting sun, and some hazy reflections make the leaves of the trees shine with gold."