Corot at his easel

It is a small thing, 32 centimetres tall, and it is painted on paper that was later glued onto canvas. That was the support for a study, something quick and portable, not for a picture meant to be sold.

The Louvre dates it to 1825 with a question mark, and 1825 is the year Corot left for Rome, where a young French landscape painter went to learn. He had been a draper's assistant into his mid-twenties and only got an allowance to paint at all in 1822. So this is a man of 29 who has been a professional for about three years, showing himself sitting beside an easel with the tools of a trade he had just been allowed to take up.

It came to the Louvre in 1906 from the collector Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, who handed over his whole Corot holding at once, and it still hangs in the room that carries his name.