Present Tense: Corot, Photography, and the Body

David Ogawa, associate professor of art history, Union College. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is best known as the great master of landscape painting in the 19th century who bridged the French neoclassical tradition with the impressionist movement of the 1870s. Corot’s figure paintings, although constituting a much smaller, less well-known portion of his oeuvre, are of equal importance to the history of art. These works are the focus of the exhibition Corot: Women, on view at the National Gallery of Art through December 31, 2018. Corot also had a long relationship with photography and photographic media, from its growth in the 1850s until his death in 1875. In this lecture held on October 20, 2018, David Ogawa explores Corot's distinct and complex engagement with photographic processes as source material, expressive medium, and an integral part of his artistic legacy.