Cleveland Museum of Art

Woman Meditating

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot

Date

after 1868

Medium

oil on fabric

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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. 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.

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