Provenance

Jules Paton

French

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Shown from the shins up, a woman with medium-toned skin plays a mandolin in this loosely painted vertical composition. The woman’s body faces us but her head tips to our left and she looks down in that direction with dark eyes. She has a short nose, and her full lips are closed over a rounded chin. Her brown hair falls loosely around her shoulders and is covered by a pumpkin-orange head cloth. Glints at her ears suggest earrings. She wears a beige jacket with puffy, voluminous sleeves over a shell-pink shirt with a high, ruffled collar above a red band. A rose-pink sash is tied around her waist and falls down the front of her long, beige skirt, and red cloth hangs along her right side, to our left. She holds a mandolin in both hands. The background is painted with dabs and mottled tones of earth green, golden brown, and muted blue and white for the sky. Brushstrokes are visible or blended throughout and are especially broad in the clothing and background. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gypsy Woman with Mandolin, c. 1870, oil on canvas, Gift of Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt, 1951.21.1

Gypsy Woman with Mandolin

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · c. 1870 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1951.21.1

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing us as she turns her head to look off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has pale, peachy skin, deeply shadowed, hooded eyes, and a straight nose. Shadows fill the hollow of her high cheekbones, and she has a thin face. Her black hair is plaited and tied up and back under brown bands. Earrings hang from each ear, and she wears two strands of white and gray pearls and three red necklaces. Her shoulders slope down, and her arms hang by her sides. The garnet-red bodice of her dress is cut low over a white undergarment. Red straps loop up over her mostly bare shoulders. Sapphire-blue sleeves leave the shoulders exposed and have black bands at the cuffs, which fall short of her wrists. An apron tied around her waist is loosely painted with deep red flowers and dark green leaves against a parchment-brown background. Her long skirt is midnight blue in the shadows. She holds a shimmering object in her right hand, to our left, and rests her other hand on the brown stone wall that runs behind her thighs. A tree edges into the scene along the right, and a few white stucco houses with flat, red roofs cluster on a rocky hill in the distance behind the woman, to our left. The cliffs span most of the background and end in a sheer face near the right edge of the canvas. The sky is tinged with peach at the horizon glimpsed at the foot of the cliff but is mostly steely gray. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Agostina, 1866, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.108

Agostina

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · 1866 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.108

A young, pale-skinned woman sits with her back to us as she looks at a painting on an easel in a studio in this vertical painting. She sits in a ladder-back wood chair so her knees angle away from us, toward the back right corner of the studio. We look onto the side of her right cheek as she leans forward. Her brown hair is combed back and twisted into a bun wrapped with a raspberry-red ribbon that trails down her back. Touches of pearl white, pale pink, and silvery gray suggest flowers by the ear we can see. A cream-white chemise falls off the shoulder closer to us, under a grass-green bodice. She holds a mandolin down by her right side, which is closer to us, to nestle in the folds of her voluminous, olive-green skirt. She reaches forward with her other hand to touch the lower left corner of the painting resting on the easel. That vertically-oriented scene is loosely painted and shows a few people gathered in a landscape. A white and black dog stands with one front leg lifted to the left of the woman's chair, looking at her. The wall opposite us is parchment white over a strip of molding, like a high chair rail, and muted mauve pink below. An L-shaped pipe leads to an iron stove to our left of center. A narrow shelf tucked into the L of the pipe holds three hand-sized sculptures or casts. Small paintings and plaster casts hang around it on the wall above the molding. The artist signed the painting in the lower right: “COROT.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand, c. 1868, oil on wood, Widener Collection, 1942.9.11

Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot · c. 1868 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1942.9.11