Woman Meditating

after 1868

copy after Jean Baptiste Camille Corot

(French, 1796–1875)

Culture

France, 19th century

Medium

oil on fabric

Measurements

Unframed: 59.4 x 42.9 cm (23 3/8 x 16 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Hanna Fund 1949.189

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Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

Scholars speculate that Camille Corot's model for this painting was Emma Dobigny, the frail young girl who posed for the two versions of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's painting Hope of 1872 (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).

This painting, acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1949, as a work by Corot, proved to be a copy when the signed original reappeared at a public auction in New York in 1981.

Description

This painting, acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1949, as a work by Corot, proved to be a copy when the signed original reappeared at a public auction in New York in 1981. Although the original, Jeune Femme Pensive or La Méditation, is not in the Corot catalogue raisonné compiled by his friend Alfred Robaut, that painting does have an unquestionable origin. According to one source, Corot painted the original version in Paris in 1866–68 and allowed his pupil, Eugène Lavieille, to make a copy with permission.