Young Woman with a Mandolin

A young woman in a red bodice sits in the painter's studio with a mandolin resting in one hand. Her chin is propped on the other, and she is looking at the easel in front of her, where a landscape stands finished in a gilt frame. A red ribbon runs through her dark hair, and behind her is a chair with a brightly patterned seat and back. Corot painted the scene around 1865, one of several pictures of his own workroom. In 1866 his friend Louis Briand acquired it directly from him. It later passed by inheritance to the Morand family, and in March 1933 it came up for sale at the Hôtel Drouot, the Paris auction house. The national museums bought it there, with a contribution from Hubert Morand's widow in memory of her husband. It belongs to the Louvre, which lends it to the Musée d'Orsay.