Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Bréau

On the back of this sheet another painter wrote down its history. François-Louis Français, a former pupil of Corot, noted that his teacher had given the study to his friend Célestin Nanteuil, a printmaker, and that Corot counted it among his best. Français found it in very bad condition in 1884 and had it cleaned and mounted on a panel. The oaks are those of the Bas-Bréau, a part of the Fontainebleau forest known for its huge old trees, painted on the spot in oil on paper. Français dated it about 1830. The Met now places it in the summer of 1832 or 1833, and one of these trees reappears in Hagar in the Wilderness, which Corot showed at the Salon of 1835. In May 1979 a New York auction house sold the sheet as School of Corot. Before the year was out it had been resold and bought by the Met.