Trees in the Forest of Fontainebleau

Corot was part of a core group of artists who began visiting Fontainebleau as early as the 1820s and 1830s, laying the groundwork for the thriving artistic community that would develop in Barbizon by midcentury. Here, his Neoclassical idealism is offset by a detailed attention to nature; he imposes order and an organized pattern within the organic form of the treetops. A faint groundline at the bottom of the sheet gives a sense of the treesʼ majestic scale. The silvery graphite and delicacy of Corotʼs touch conveys a lightness in the dense foliage, suggestive of leaves rustling in the breeze.