The Ramparts of Arras, Porte Saint-Michel

For more than 20 years Arras was a second home for Corot. In 1847 Constant Dutilleux, a painter and printer in the town, wrote to him, and the friendship brought him to Artois nearly every year after that. Dutilleux died in 1865, and Corot went on coming north to see his friends there, among them Dutilleux's son-in-law, the painter Charles Desavary. In 1871, once the Prussian siege of Paris had ended, his friend Alfred Robaut came to the capital and persuaded him to travel north again. This small canvas is from that year. A path climbs past bare trees towards a row of houses, a figure in a dark cloak walks along it, and on the right rise the heavy stone walls and the arch of the Porte Saint-Michel, one of the gates in the town's fortifications. Corot signed it at the lower left.