The Little Shepherd

In 1840 Corot sent this small canvas to the Paris Salon, and after more than a decade of showing there with little reward, the State finally bought one of his pictures. The scene is quiet: a boy tends his goats at the edge of a wood, leaning against a tree and playing a flute as the sun sinks behind him. What happened next explains why it hangs in Metz. That same year severe floods struck southern France, and the city of Metz sent real help to the victims. In thanks, the government gave its new Corot to Metz, where it has stayed since 1841. The soft, dreamlike light was fairly new for him too, the manner admirers would later call lyrical. That low, hazy gold on the far trees is the effect he built the whole picture around.