A Woman Reading

1869 and 1870
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 803
When the seventy-two-year-old Corot showed A Woman Reading at the Salon of 1869, the critic Théophile Gautier praised its naïveté and its color but criticized the faulty drawing of the woman, noting the rarity of figures in Corot’s work. Although the artist had painted similar studies for about a decade, this was the first and one of the very few that he exhibited. Corot returned to the canvas soon after the Salon; he reworked the landscape but left the figure intact.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: A Woman Reading
  • Artist: Camille Corot (French, Paris 1796–1875 Paris)
  • Date: 1869 and 1870
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 21 3/8 x 14 3/4 in. (54.3 x 37.5 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Louise Senff Cameron, in memory of her uncle, Charles H. Senff, 1928
  • Object Number: 28.90
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

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