Watermark: Shield with BE inside, surmounted by crescent, fragment. Watermark (beta radiograph) shield, BE, crescent 439928wm_2022_322_Corot_WM_beta.tiff
Beginning in the 1850s, Corot experimented with cliché-verre, or "glass plate," a reproductive print that is a hybrid of drawing, printmaking, and photography. He was tutored in the method by photographer Adalbert Cuvelier, an originator of cliché-verre in France and father of Eugène, who in turn taught the technique to Daubigny, Huet, Millet, and Rousseau. The process involves coating a glass plate in printerʼs ink or photographic emulsion, scratching a linear image into the coating, and printing the plate on photographic paper. This drawing is preparatory for one such print. Corot was so deeply engaged with the potential of this technique that it comprised two thirds of his entire graphic output. -- Exhibition Label, "Into the Woods: 19th Century Drawings and Photographs from the Karen B. Cohen Gift"
Inscribed at lower right, in pen and brown ink: "Fa...[illegible]"; on verso of secondary support, at upper right, in pen and brown ink: "37 nicolo A[bate]"; at upper center, in pen and brown ink, "17"; on verso of tertiary support, at center, in pen and brown ink, "S.R.⁰.11".
Cohen, Karen B., former owner.