The Reaper with a Sickle

By 1928 this little canvas belonged to Albert Henraux, a Paris collector who in 1932 became president of the Société des Amis du Louvre, the society of private supporters that buys works for the museum. From November 1944 to the end of 1949 Henraux chaired the commission set up to bring back to France the paintings, books and archives the Germans had removed during the Occupation. His Corot was lent to exhibitions in 1928 and 1936. In 1956, three years after his death, two Paris dealers, Hector Brame and César de Hauke, sold it to Knoedler in New York, and that May the Boston collector William Appleton Coolidge bought it. He left it to the museum in 1993. The picture shows a young woman resting at the edge of a harvest field, her chin on her fist and a white blouse slipping from one shoulder. Her other hand holds a sickle that curves down across her green skirt, and far behind her two small figures bend over the wheat. Corot signed and dated it in red at the lower left, 1838.