Old Beech Tree

In 1800 the landscape painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes published a treatise telling young artists to go outdoors and paint quick studies in oil, straight from nature, as practice for the composed landscapes they would later send to the Salon. A generation of French painters learned that way, and Jean-Victor Bertin, one of Corot's teachers, had been Valenciennes' pupil. This study, from around 1828 to 1830, turns that training on a single tree. A pale, scarred beech trunk fills the left half, splitting in two above a knot, its moss and broken bark put down patch by patch. Behind it thinner trunks stand in a green haze, and mossy boulders line a path on the right. It is painted on paper, 56 by 46 centimetres, and was later laid down on canvas.