Corot painted prolifically, taking many trips to fuel his painting, which transformed constantly without rigidly adhering to any specific style. MASP has five works by the artist: three portraits, a landscape and a still life. In Gypsy Girl with a Mandolin (1874), a portrait of Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson (1843-1921), the ochers and reds evince a calculated sobriety. Careful use of color is also the high point of Rose in un Bicchiere (1874), in which the cup’s transparency and the variation between thin and solid swatches of color convey a sensation of moistness. The uniform background highlights the color of each leaf and petal. The vertical and horizontal lines, coupled with the cup’s off-center placement, lend this picture a casual and intimist aspect. It is one of just three paintings of flowers by the artist. In Landscape with Peasant Girl (1861) the gradation of blues between the sky and hills in the background is echoed in that of the greens of the pasture in the middle of the canvas. The horizontal division is the axis for a mirroring both in terms of color and composition: the green field slopes down to the right while the blue line of the faraway hills slopes upward at the same angle. The tree at the center connects the two planes, while the working peasant girl represents labor as a constitutive element of this landscape.
— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017
By Luciano Migliaccio
Corot made very few paintings of flowers – as far as we know, no more than three. However, these paintings are like jewels in his production. The first of them the artist painted in 1871 for his future biographer, Robaut (Robaut, 1905, n. 2154), and the other two, in 1874 (one of them – Roses in a Glass – integrates the Masp Collection). Sterling (1952, p. 85) compared them to paintings by Impressionist artists, though their sensitive tonal gradations contrasted with the splendid renditions by Monet or Renoir. In the “dim interior” (Sterling, ibid.), Corot seemingly surrenders to a sort of vibrant tenderness generated by a gentle distancing (Leymarie 1979, p. 158). The only difference between the picture in the Masp Collection and the other painting of flowers presently in the Hodgkin Collection, in London, is a tobacco box and the extent to which Corot was lured by the humidity of flower petals, with resulting variance of light effects. The artist focused on these effects so intently that they became the theme of the painting, treated with luminous strokes that vary to render a semidarkness. The red rose bulges out, filling up space; the lighter-color flowers stoop haggardly, while white buds jut out like spearheads. In these masterpieces by Corot, the finest legacy of Chardin and Liotard, the small things that speak to one’s eyes and heart, are hand-delivered in Giorgio Morandi’s style.
In 1874 Corot, an indefatigable traveler, visited L’Isle-Adam, Ville d’Avray, Douai, and Béthune, pausing at his studio in Coubron, where he worked during the month of June and painted Roses in a Glass. The artist donated the painting to a certain Mr. Berthelier, who kept it until the end of his life. On the picture frame, Mr. Berthelier’s son wrote the following inscription: “Gift from Corot to my father”. Bazin (1951, n. 21) suggested that the date (imprinted with the paintbrush handle directly on the color surface) was not a procedure typical of Corot; rather, it was probably related to the painter’s onomastic day, June 24th, which in this case was the last one before his death. If, as it seems, the recipient of such a tribute was painter Jean-Marie Berthelier, of Lyon, who painted flowers and fruits in Paris between 1866 and 1874, then Corot’s gesture was laden with a very special and touching meaning.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998
