Peasants in a Clearing near Arras

In May 1853, while staying in Arras in the north of France, Corot drew his first picture on a sheet of glass. Two local men showed him how, the photographer Adalbert Cuvelier and the drawing master Léandre Grandguillaume. The glass was coated, a needle scratched lines through the coating, and the plate could then be printed like a photographic negative as many times as anyone liked. By 1860 Corot had made some 50 of these plates, known in French as clichés-verre. The title of this canvas places it near Arras too, but the painting itself is by another hand. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston catalogues it as a copy after Corot and records the painting it was made from as untraced. Tall, thin trees arch over a sandy road, a rider on horseback heads off to the right, and on the left two peasant women stand together while a third figure crouches beside them in the grass. The name COROT is inscribed at the lower left.