the light which
shines from so many canvases is the true expression of many a life
which is clouded to our superficial view. With Corot, however, it
is impossible to make this separation. Every added detail of his
life--and they are so numerous that in the difficulty of a choice they
must remain unrecorded here--gives a new perception of his work. A
youthful Virgilian spirit to the day of his death, as old at his
birth as the classic source from which he sprang, he invented a method
essentially his own, in which to express his new-old message. In our
work-a-day, materialistic age, like a thrush singing in a boiler-shop,
he is the quiet but triumphant vindication of the truth that all
great art has its roots firmly implanted in the earth of Hellenic
civilization, though its expression may be, as in Corot's case,
through an art unknown to the Greeks, and even, as in the case of
the one greater man of this century than Corot--Millet--by the
presentation of types which the beauty-loving sons of Hellas disdained
to represent.

Millet's work must be considered later in these papers, but it
is useful here to make this passing comment, that with Corot he
represents what is best in our modern art; that the greatest quality
of our modern art is its steadfast reliance on nature; and that,
paradoxical as it may seem, they are alike in taking only that from
nature which is serviceable to the clarity of their expression, being
in this both at odds with the common practice of modern painting,
which usually adopts a more servile attitude towards nature. Corot
painted out of doors constantly; but in the maturity of his art his
work was only based upon the scene before him, a practice dangerous to
the student, and fraught with difficulty to the master. In the fever
of production; in the almost childish joy which the long neglected
painter felt when dealers and collectors besieged his door; and,
finally, in the necessity which arose for large sums of money to carry
on works of charity, which were his only dissipation, and which it
was his pride to sustain without impairing the patrimony which in
the course of time he had inherited, and which he left intact to his
relatives, Corot undoubtedly weakened his legacy to the future by
over-production. In addition, his work became the prey of unscrupulous
dealers (as there is nothing easier to imitate superficially than a
Corot), and the mediocre pictures signed by his name are not always of
hi