Woman with a Pink Shawl

In 1888 a Boston eye doctor bought this canvas from Aimé Diot, a Paris dealer. Henry Clay Angell had trained in Vienna and Berlin in the early 1860s, became professor of ophthalmology at the new Boston University medical school in 1873, and wrote a handbook on diseases of the eye that ran to seven editions. He painted as well, and with his wife Martha he hung their house at 16 Beacon Street with French pictures. This one came out of Corot's studio. The red stamp at the lower left, VENTE COROT, was put on the works sold from it in May 1875, a few months after his death, and this canvas was lot 474. Much of it is still only sketched in. A dark-haired young woman sits in a pale dress with a pink shawl drawn over one shoulder, one hand raised to her collar, against a few loose sweeps of olive and brown. Martha Angell gave the collection to the museum in 1916, and it passed to the museum in full when she died in 1919.