Title: An Interior of a Barn
Date: 1874
Medium: Oil on canvas
Signed: lower right: 1874 Corot
Credit Line: Presented, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, 1950
Object Number: NGI.4218
Exhibition HistoryFrench 19th and 20th Century Paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland: Corot to Picasso, Daimaru Museum, Tokyo, 5 September-17 September 1996; Daimaru Museum, Kyoto, 10 October-22 October 1996; Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi, 26 October-2 December 1996; Daimaru Museum, Umeda,Osaka, 22 January-9 February 1997; Aomori Municpal Gallery of Art, Aomori, 2 April-20 April 1997
Chester Beatty: The Paintings, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 7 September 2012 - 31 August 2013; The Hunt Museum, Limerick, 1 February - 30 March 2014
Von Poussin bis Monet. Die Farben Frankreichs, The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 22 March - 6 September 2015; Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 10 October 2015 - 17 January 2016
Label TextCorot painted this picture at the age of seventy-eight. It is one of his final works. Although he painted many portraits during his long career, Corot’s main interest was in landscapes. He executed hundreds of landscapes in styles that varied from Neoclassical to Impressionistic. This barn interior is an unusual subject for the artist. However, the horizontal brush strokes used to convey straw in the foreground are characteristic of Corot’s work. He often used similar wispy marks in his landscapes to convey a sense of movement and light.