The Bridge at Narni

In September 1826 Corot was 30 and on his first trip to Italy, painting outdoors near the town of Narni, where the broken Roman bridge of Augustus still spans the Nera river. What the Louvre owns is that on-the-spot study, oil on paper, laid down in front of the view with broad strokes chasing the light. Back in the studio he reworked the scene into a larger, calmer picture with framing trees, and sent that to the Paris Salon of 1827. It now hangs in Ottawa. This little sketch he kept, unshown in his lifetime. The view was no discovery of his either. His old teacher Michallon had drawn the same bridge five years before, and a friend was sketching it that very season.