Souvenir of the Environs of Lake Nemi

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot · 1865

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

98.4 × 134.3 cm (38 3/4 × 52 7/8 in.); Framed: 120.7 × 156.9 × 8.9 cm (47 1/2 × 61 3/4 × 3 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

Painted nearly forty years after Corot's first Italian journey, this luminous landscape distils a lifetime of memory into shimmering greens and the pale silver light that became his signature. Corot visited the volcanic lake south of Rome on multiple trips as a young painter and returned to its imagery long after, composing works from recollection rather than observation — a practice he signalled in his titles with the word "souvenir." By the 1860s his technique had evolved away from classical precision toward something softer and more atmospheric: feathery foliage rendered in broken strokes, tonal mists that dissolve solid form, a quiet melancholy that influenced the Impressionists who followed him. The result is less a topographical record of Lake Nemi than a felt impression of it, the landscape filtered through decades of affection. Corot was one of the most widely forged painters of his era — it was said, with some exaggeration, that of his two thousand paintings, three thousand were in America. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using artist-grade oils, matching the tonal palette and soft brushwork that give the original its distinctive mood, so the painting carries the same contemplative atmosphere whether it hangs in a hallway or a sitting room.