"Wait there a minute, please, sheepy-sheepy, and a great man will paint you."

Today we're happy to be releasing a new e-book, Corot, by Elbert Hubbard. Part of our new line of classic books on art, this brief biography of the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was originally published in 1902. I first came across the book only four weeks ago in Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis. Both as a reader and as a publisher I'm always on the lookout for interesting books on art, and the worn old copy of the nicely printed original Corot pamphlet cost just a few dollars. It was a happy find.

Reading it later, I found Hubbard's writing engaging and entertaining, but it wasn't until I came across this excerpt—from the very lively letter of Corot's that's included in the book—that I knew we'd publish an e-book edition:

A good picture is full of motion. Clouds that stand still are not clouds—motion, activity, life, yes, life is what we want—life!

Bam! A peasant comes out of the cottage and is coming to the meadow.

Ding, ding, ding! There comes a flock of sheep led by a bell wether. Wait there a minute, please, sheepy-sheepy, and a great man will paint you.

All right then, don’t wait. I didn’t want to paint you anyway.

I can't blame most people for glazing over at the phrase "nineteenth century French art", but they're people that haven't read texts like these. "Wait there a minute, please, sheepy-sheepy, and a great man will paint you." Individual, honest, playful and passionate. A little silly too maybe, but it's writing like this that makes far-away-seeming art and artists come alive. 

My dream is to host a live, dramatic reading of Corot's letter on stage somwhere, but for now I'll have to be satisfied with this new e-book edition. And to celebrate the finding of the book at Magers & Quinn, and to encourage it be found again and again, we're making it free to download for a limited time. Enjoy!

An ewe and a lamb, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, ca. 1825. © musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques.