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52 The long and inglorious early training he went through, the discouragement of his father, the want of appreciation by the public, and the many weary years he had to wait before he was admitted to be a master in his art, all tended to impress on him the necessity of study ; and even up to within a com- paratively short time of the end of his nearly eighty years, he drew fi-om the nude at night every winter, so that his hand might retain its power of drawing correctly. Those, too, who have seen the earliest work of Corot ^ will remember that it is laboured and ' tiglit,' and even ' niggled,' that the drawing is severe and the composition almost servilely classical. And later, his pictures were sincere echoes of his master, Aligny, and the well-known picture of this artist, now hung in the dark at Fontainebleau, shows many points of similarity with Corof s works. Indeed when one examines the relation of Corot to Aligny in his youthful pictures, no pupil need be ashamed when he is accused of following his teacher, for Corot simply accepted his master's style until, after several years, he found he could improve on it. It is always an interesting question to those practically engaged in painting to know what methods of work and what colours were on the palette of the great artists they admire. Some painters are absurdly jealous of their palette being known ; these are they who, having learned a trick in painting, and profited thereby, are meanly afraid to tell it to any one else. There are painters who, for such reasons, refuse to allow any one into their studios while they are engaged on their canvases ; but great artists, with becoming magnanimity, will tell anything that they know, for the sake of helping others. That wonderful if sometimes weird artist, Matthew Maris, told a visitor the other day that the chief colour he used was black, that he never used any of the umbers, and he showed his palette, with which he was work- ing on a very tender and exquisite landscape, and at the time it contained only black, white, cobalt blue, and a touch of vermilion. Corot showed his palette to many people, and although little has been written about it, there is enough to show how he worked, and what pigments he employed. Corot mixed his colours on his pal- ette ; he always used the definite tones in each colour, and in commencing his pictures used black, white, and raw umber. As the writer has men- tioned in another place,- Corot preferred half- primed canvas, sometimes toned, and never strained too tightly, as he could knock up the ' keys ' after- ^ In the Louvre, for example. - The Magazine of Art for April 1888. wards. Matthew Maris, too, it may be mentioned, also prefers half-primed canvas. Corot put in the composition of his pictures in the method of the old masters, blocking them in with the three colours mentioned, and heightening them with the siennas or yellow ochre, if necessary. He thus got his high- est lights and deepest darks, and toned them with transparent colours afterwards. It is worthy of remark that, as a rule, Corot and others of the French School worked from dark to light — that is, they laid their colours in at first heavier than they required, and in their painting gradually caused them to become lighter in tone. One famous sunset sky by Theodore Rousseau was laid in with black at first, and gradually worked up into its present golden russet colour. Corot seldom painted a picture right off. He began it one day, put it away for a time, took it up again, carrying it forward to get the effect, put it aside once more until it dried, and then took it up and painted it several times until it was completed. When young at his painting, Corot walked back- wards after he had painted a bit to see the eff^ect, then he would return and again paint, and again walk back, until, as he used to say, 'My first pic- tures have caused me to take so many paces back- wards and forwards, that eacli one represents over a hundred miles.' But after much practice Corot was able to paint at liis pictures without rising, and late in life he said, ' I could mention certain pictures which truly I never really saw until they had been signed, framed, and paid for,' meaning that he had been seated so close to his canvas, and felt so certain of the value of his touches, that it never was necessary for him to step back to look at his work as a whole. This, however, is not a commendable practice until a painter's knowledge is as extensive as was Corot's. At another time Corot spoke to a friend about his difficulty in sky-painting in a very interesting monologue which is worth repeating in entirety. ' At first,' he said, ' I often felt sorely tried when wishing to paint a sky from nature. I found the clouds stealing off" too quickly. Stop ! said I, trying to do as Joshua did with the sun ; but Joshua had a command over the firmament which evidently I had not ! My clouds continued to drive along the sky, changing in colour and form, and setting one at defiance by the rapidity of their alterations. One morning,' he goes on, ' I went to them, calling in my vexation, Norn d'une pipe ! remain there for a minute before me, for I do not want to paint you wrongly ! It is with shame I confess these trans- ports, for after all a sky standing still is no sky at all. The talent of the painter consists in rightfully rendering the changing tints and majestic move-