The Gust of Wind (Le Coup de Vent)
1871
Medium
Lithograph; second state of two
Dimensions
Image: 8 9/16 in. × 11 in. (21.8 × 28 cm) Sheet: 13 3/8 × 18 13/16 in. (34 × 47.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
Accession Number
32.34.5
Tags
Art Historical Context
Camille Corot, a leading figure in the Barbizon school of landscape painting, created *The Gust of Wind ( Coup de Vent)* in 1871 as a lith in its second and final state. At 76 years old, Corot renowned for his poetic, light-filled depictions of nature, blending Romantic sensitivity with emerging Impressionist tendencies. This print captures a dramatic moment in the French countryside, where a sudden gust bends slender trees and stirs the landscape into motion, evoking the transient beauty of weather's whims. Lithography, a planar printing process invented in the late 18th century, allowed Cor...
About the Artist
Camille Corot · 1796–1875
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, born in Paris on July 16, 1796, into a prosperous bourgeois family—his father a former wig maker turned draper, his mother a successful milliner—initially resisted his artistic calling. After a lackluster education at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen and failed apprenticeships in business, he abandoned commerce at age 26, thanks to a generous parental allowance foll...