Path along the Wood

Before he became a painter, Corot spent several years in the Paris cloth trade, and one of the merchants he trained with was named Delalain. He later gave this canvas to Madame Delalain, his old employer's wife. It shows a country road near Mortain in Normandy, with apple trees along one side, a wood along the other and a woman in a white cap standing on it. The Louvre dates it between 1835 and 1845. The picture stayed in the family. In January 1887 it was still with the Delalains' son Édouard, and Alfred Robaut, who spent years cataloguing Corot's work, made a drawing of it in his house. It was sold in Paris in 1900 and came to the Louvre as a bequest in 1996.