Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) was the quiet revolutionary of nineteenth-century landscape. Trained in Paris, he made formative trips to Italy in the 1820s and 1830s, absorbing classical structure and Mediterranean light. Back in France, he worked between the studio and the outdoors, producing brisk plein-air oil studies and meditative “souvenirs”—poetic recollections of nature filtered through memory. Corot’s restrained palette of pearly grays and silvery greens, his veils of atmospheric tone, and his lyrical tree silhouettes shaped the sensibility of the Barbizon School and opened pathways for Impressionism. Though he painted figures and biblical subjects, he is beloved for riverbanks, woodland edges, and dawn mists where laborers, shepherds, and modest towns appear as notes within larger harmonies. A generous mentor, he supported younger painters, from Pissarro to Berthe Morisot, and collectors prized his sincerity over bravura. Late in life he achieved broad acclaim, yet his art remained intimate: humble motifs, tender light, and an ethics of attention. Corot transformed landscape from topography into feeling, teaching viewers to see not only the place before them but the mood it evokes.