Ville d'Avray, Woodland Path Bordering the Pond

Corot returned to Ville d'Avray's wooded pond settings throughout his life, and this 1872 version of the woodland path bordering the pond represents one of his final treatments of his most personal landscape motif. The Indianapolis canvas joins a large body of Ville d'Avray paintings distributed across European and American collections — evidence of Corot's extraordinary productivity in his late years and the enormous appetite for his atmospheric, poetic landscapes among collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. In these final works, memory and observation blur into a vision of nature that transcends any particular location.

Corot renders the wooded path and glimpsed pond with his most mature silvery atmospheric handling. The foliage trembles in soft, grey-green masses, and the water surface catches the light through the trees with luminous delicacy.