Sin Pres de Douai, Rue du Village, Le Martin

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's 1872 view of a village street in Sin-lès-Douai (a town near Douai in northern France) is typical of his late period engagement with modest French villages and their tree-lined roads. Le Martin was a specific location in or near Sin, and the precise topographic title suggests this was a record of a specific place rather than a composed invention. Corot's village and road subjects from the 1870s have a quiet documentary quality alongside their characteristic atmospheric treatment. The Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow holds this as an example of his late work, acquired in the period when Corot was among the most popular French painters collected in Britain.

Corot's characteristic silvery grey-green atmosphere pervades the composition. Village buildings and trees are rendered with his mature economy — forms established in soft tonal values rather than crisp outlines. The road provides a receding perspective axis, and the feathery foliage overhead creates his characteristic dappled light.