A Flood

Corot was in his seventies when he painted this, probably in the first half of the 1870s, and like most of his late landscapes it was made in the studio from memory, often blending several real places. The title calls it a flood, and the water spreads so flat and pale among the trees that it is hard to tell where it ends and the land begins. The only warm note is a small figure in a red shawl standing still under the leaning tree. The National Gallery's study of the paint shows that he laid the whole picture in thinly and quickly and put the sky in last, with the thickest paint on the canvas, bringing it down over the roofs of the houses and in one place hiding a roof completely. Just beside the big tree, a pale birch trunk seems to float, not quite anchored to the ground.