Claire Sennegon

Between 1830 and 1845 Corot kept painting the children of his sister Annette-Octavie, who in 1813 had married Laurent-Denis Sennegon, the son of old friends of the Corot family. Most of these portraits were gifts for her, family pictures rather than work for the Paris Salon. Claire, one of the younger daughters, was 16 when she sat for this one in 1837. Her uncle placed her outdoors, in a white dress with the full puffed sleeves of the 1830s, a bonnet with long ribbons hanging down her front, and black fingerless mitts on her hands. Behind her, flat country runs out to a low strip of orange sky. The Louvre hangs the canvas in the Sully wing among French landscapes painted between 1820 and 1850. It came to the museum in 1926 from the heirs of Claire's daughter Blanche, whose own portrait by Corot was given at the same time.