Lesende Frau

When Corot sent this to the Paris Salon of 1869 he was 72 and near the end of a long career built almost entirely on landscape. It was the only one of his figure paintings he ever put on public show, and it drew mixed notices: the critic Theophile Gautier admired the color but faulted the drawing of the woman. Corot seems to have taken some of that to heart. Soon after the Salon he got the canvas back and reworked it, painting out a willow that had crowded the left side and opening up the sky behind her, while leaving the seated reader herself untouched. What you see now is that second version, with the countryside cleared to let the light in.