Jean-Baptise-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875) Le Passeur signed 'Corot' (lower left) oil on canvas 9 1/2 x 11 1/4 in. 24 x 29 cm. Painted circa 1855-60 PROVENANCE: Clementine Poiret (a gift from the artist). Anon. sale, Auch, 22 April 1989. LITERATURE: P.Dieterle and A. Pacitti, Quatrieme supplement a l'oeuvre de Corot par AlfredRobaut, Paris, 1992. In an article entitled Un etranger au Salon,Arthur Stevens offers a highly romanticized view of Corot's typical day painting in the French countryside: Do you see, it is charming the day of the landscape painter?You get up at a good hour, at three o'clock in the morning, before the sun; you sit down at the foot of the tree; you look and wait. You do not see much at first. Nature resembles a whitish canvas where the profiles of some masses are barely discernible; everything is misty, everything shivers at the fresh breath of dawn (quoted in Clarke, Corot and the Art of Landscape, 1991, p. 89). Corot spent a lifetime traveling throughout France and Italy where the various terrains of the mountains, forests and rivers afforded him a diverse repertoire of subjects for his paintings. This handsome painting is a particularly successful example of the type of scene that Corot's landscapes even provoked Emperor Napoleon III to comment "I have never risen early enough in the morning to understand M. Corot" (quoted in Tinterow, Corot, 1996, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, exh. cat., p.259). Le passeur was a gift from Corot to his childhood friend Clementine Poiret. Both were nursed by the same woman in the country side of Paris, making Poiret Corot's "soeur de lait". This work has been examined and authenticated by Martin Dieterle.

Eugéne Boudin 1824-1898 French “Camaret, le môle” Oil on canvas 21 5/8” x 35 3/8”

Bernard Buffet 1928-1999 French “Nature morte aux chardons” Oil on canvas 130 x 81 cm. Dated 1952

Camille Jacob Pissaro 1830-1903 “La charite” - 1876 Oil on canvas 22 1/8 x ” 18 1/8” (56 x 46cm) Signed and dated PROVENANCE Galerie Bernheim – Jeune – Paris GAlerie Durand-Ruel, Paris Georges Viau, Paris Hirschl & Adler Paul Mellon, Upperville Sale Christies NY, 11/15/1983 lot 44 Acquired by the present owner at the above sale Literature l. R. Pissarro and L. Venturi, Camille Pissarro, son Art (Euvre, Paris, 1939 no 375