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Past Exhibitions
Corot: Souvenirs et variations

Corot: Souvenirs et variations

Dates
14 June 2008 - 31 August 2008
Venue
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
In cooperation with
the Yomiuri Shimbun and the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), and with the support of the Ambassade de France au Japon etc.
Exhibited works
109 paintings, 10 prints, 119 works in total
Number of visitors
286,173

Also held at the Kobe Municipal Museum, 13 September - 7 December 2008

The 19th century French painter Camille Corot (1796-1875) created numerous lyric landscape and figural paintings, and today his oeuvre continues to fascinate artists and art aficionados throughout the world. In spite of Corot’s fame and achievement, there have been a surprisingly few major exhibitions focusing on Corot in Japan or overseas. This exhibition centers on the important group of major works by Corot in the Musee du Louvre as it reexamines the fascination and secrets of Corot’s arts. Works on display range from Corot's earliest creations to his late period, encompassing early Romantic style landscape paintings, study works created in Italy, realist works, and his late period works with their uniquely hazy, poetic expression that developed into images of memories and dream-like visions. This major gathering of Corot's works also features the finely detailed figural paintings he created at different times during his life. In addition to works by Corot, this exhibition marks the first experiment worldwide in presenting a group of works by artists who were deeply influenced by Corot, ranging in style and date from the Impressionists through the Cubists.

By no means did Corot himself emphasize the revolutionary nature of his own arts which had such a massive impact on art history. It is our great hope that this exhibition, with its superb selection of more than 110 paintings and prints by Corot, Renoir, Sisley, Braque and others, will allow visitors to fully experience the resonant modernist sensibility that underscores Corot’s works.