Souvenir of the Banks of the Saône

Two words stand in front of Corot's name on this picture's record in Boston, attributed to. They are the museum's way of saying that it believes the painting is his and cannot prove it. The picture does have a documented past. In 1905 the catalogue of Corot's work compiled by his friend Alfred Robaut listed it as number 1865, and COROT is lettered on the canvas at the lower right. Its route can be traced from May 1890, when it was sold at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. By June 1891 it belonged to a collector in London, and in 1898 a London firm sold it to dealers in New York. The title places it on the Saône, the river that flows south through Burgundy to meet the Rhône at Lyon. A large tree leans over the left half, a thin one rises at the right, and between them a boatman stands in a long, flat boat at the water's edge. Across the river a few pale houses sit on a low rise, and a woman crouches in the grass in the foreground. The museum dates the canvas to about 1870.