Uma Manhã. A Dança das Ninfas

Corot painted this when he was in his mid-fifties, after decades of being quietly admired and rarely bought. It went to the Paris Salon of 1850, where the French state bought it, and pictures like this, silvery dawn woods with nymphs dancing barefoot in a clearing, were what finally made his name. The subject is old, borrowed from myth, though the light is closely observed. He built the trees from thin, feathery greys and greens so the whole scene seems to shiver in a morning haze, the sun not yet fully up. Younger painters took note. Monet and the others soon to be called Impressionists studied this loosened, atmospheric touch. The state hung it in the Luxembourg, the museum then reserved for living artists, and it passed to the Orsay only much later.