Corot's description of the beginning of a day in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
“

You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon.. .Ah, a first ray of sunshine!

— Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon.. .Ah, a first ray of sunshine!" in the context of "Corot's description of the beginning of a day in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot" (Quotes, 1850s) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

About Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (16 July 1796 – 22 February 1875) was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching and famous art teacher in Paris. Corot was a leading figure in the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism