In the Studio

Béraud painted this small panel in Paris in 1880, and it seems to have gone straight from him into a French private collection, where it stayed. It resurfaced at a country sale in Honfleur in January 2008, catalogued as Dans l'atelier, a portrait of Coquelin aîné in the character of a painter.

Coquelin was one of the most famous actors in France, a leading man of the Comédie-Française who in 1897 would create the role of Cyrano de Bergerac. He and Béraud knew each other well, and four years after this panel was painted Coquelin sat for the figure of the orator in Béraud's crowded scene of a political meeting in a hall in Ménilmontant.

The museum bought the panel in March 2009 and records it plainly as In the Studio, without naming the man in the room.