About three hundred years before Corot's time there was a
Fontainebleau school of artists, made up of the pathetic Andrea del
Sarto, the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci, and Cellini. These painters
had been summoned from their Italian homes by Francis I., to decorate
the Palace of Fontainebleau. The second great group of painters who
had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupre,
Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the
painter of peasants.

Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary
school at Rouen could give him. He was intended by his parents for
something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world
was intended. Corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper; at
any rate a draper.

The young chap did as his father wished, until he was twenty-six years
old, and dreary years those must have been to him. He did not get on
well with his master, nor did the world treat him very well. He found
neither riches nor the fame that was his due till he was an old man of
seventy. At that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been
had he remained a sensible draper.

Best of all, Corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale moons
and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the
theatre. There he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him,
weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child.

After he had anything to give away, Corot was the most madly generous
of men. It was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother
artist, Millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. He gave