Die vier Tageszeiten: die Nacht

Corot painted four narrow panels for a friend, and this is the last of them. The friend was Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, a painter far better known at the time than Corot, who had bought a house at Fontainebleau and wanted something for his studio wall. Morning, noon, evening, night. Decamps was astonished that all four were finished inside a week. Night is the darkest of them, the sky deep blue along the horizon and grey above it with stars showing, and the same small walker in a red cap heads home with his dog. Decamps died in 1860 after a fall from his horse, and in 1865 the set was bought by the English painter Frederic Leighton. The panels stayed in Britain and came to the National Gallery in London in 2014.