Gutachten:
[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],21')]

Provenienz:
[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],22')]

Ausstellungen:
[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],23')]

Ausstellung:
[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],24')]

Literatur:
[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],25')]

[Art.ArtText.Text@@1('[Art.BoId],26')]

Provenance:
- Henri Rouart Collection.
- Sale Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 9–11.12.1912, lot 174.
- Collection Leonard Gow, London.
- Sale Christie’s, London, 28.5.1937, lot 39.
- With Gallery Reid & Lefevre, London, acquired at the above auction.
- Charles Goldman Collection.
- Sale Sotheby’s, New York, 21.3.1962, lot 57.
- Private collection, Switzerland, for several generations, acquired at the above auction.

Exhibited:
- Paris 1996, Galerie Schmit, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot dans les collections privées, 24.4.–9.7.1996, no. 42 (reproduced).
- Geneva 2010–2011, Musée Rath, Corot en Suisse, 24.9.2010–9.1.2011, no. 92 (reproduced).

Literature:
- Claude Bernheim de Villers: Corot, peintre de figures, Paris 1930, no. 323.
- Alfred Robaut: L’œuvre de Corot, Paris 1965, vol. III, p. 298, no. 2148 bis (there erroneously as oil on canvas, reproduced on p. 299).

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s ‘Jeune femme jouant de la mandoline’ shows us a young woman sitting in front of an easel in a studio playing a mandolin. This elegant depiction of a figure with an extremely poetic and sensual character is a particular rarity in Corot’s oeuvre. The graceful figure of the sitter and the intimacy conveyed by the scene are reminiscent of the depictions of female figures found in Renaissance painting, and especially in the paintings of the Dutch masters of the 17th century.

The inspiration, which is reflected in the general aspect of the woman depicted, is likely to have come to Corot during his extensive travels to Italy, which he undertook several times between 1825 and 1843. Although the work presented here was painted around 1870, long after Corot’s travels in Italy, the stylistic proximity of the subject to Corot’s paintings of Italian peasant girls cannot be denied. Our painting shows just such an idealised beauty, whose sublimity is aptly accentuated by her posture as well as by the artistic attributes of the mandolin and the easel with canvas.

This work stands in the context of six other paintings that Corot painted between 1865 and 1870, which similarly depict a young woman in an Italian dress in front of an easel. These six other paintings are all in important collections and museums: the Musée d'Orsay (inv. no. RF 3745), the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (inv. no. 1942.9.11), the Spencer and Marlene Hays Collection, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (inv. no. B 627), the Baltimore Museum of Art (inv. no. 1950.200) and the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. RF 1974). The auction of the present painting thus offers a unique opportunity to acquire an exceptionally rare painting in the artist’s oeuvre of museum quality.