Souvenir of a Meadow at Brunoy

Corot died in February 1875, and that year the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris put on a large exhibition of his work. This canvas was number 193. It was lent by Louis Latouche, who sold artists' colours from a shop on the corner of the rue Laffitte and the rue La Fayette, dealt in pictures and painted a little himself. The year before, he had shown four works of his own at the first Impressionist exhibition. In the early 1880s the picture was bought in France for a dealer in Providence, Rhode Island, and by 1887 it hung in the Boston house of Mary Hemenway, the philanthropist who had given 100,000 dollars to save the Old South Meeting House. Her son later remembered that she paid 10,000 dollars for it. In those years it was called Ville d'Avray, after the village west of Paris where Corot's family kept a country house. Its present title puts it at Brunoy, on the river Yerres south-east of the city. A path runs between tall, thin trees toward a few pale houses on a rise, a cow grazes at the right, and small figures walk along the path. The museum dates it to about 1855 to 1865.