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Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing us as she turns her head to look off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has pale, peachy skin, deeply shadowed, hooded eyes, and a straight nose. Shadows fill the hollow of her high cheekbones, and she has a thin face. Her black hair is plaited and tied up and back under brown bands. Earrings hang from each ear, and she wears two strands of white and gray pearls and three red necklaces. Her shoulders slope down, and her arms hang by her sides. The garnet-red bodice of her dress is cut low over a white undergarment. Red straps loop up over her mostly bare shoulders. Sapphire-blue sleeves leave the shoulders exposed and have black bands at the cuffs, which fall short of her wrists. An apron tied around her waist is loosely painted with deep red flowers and dark green leaves against a parchment-brown background. Her long skirt is midnight blue in the shadows. She holds a shimmering object in her right hand, to our left, and rests her other hand on the brown stone wall that runs behind her thighs. A tree edges into the scene along the right, and a few white stucco houses with flat, red roofs cluster on a rocky hill in the distance behind the woman, to our left. The cliffs span most of the background and end in a sheer face near the right edge of the canvas. The sky is tinged with peach at the horizon glimpsed at the foot of the cliff but is mostly steely gray. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”
Read the visual description

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing us as she turns her head to look off to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The woman has pale, peachy skin, deeply shadowed, hooded eyes, and a straight nose. Shadows fill the hollow of her high cheekbones, and she has a thin face. Her black hair is plaited and tied up and back under brown bands. Earrings hang from each ear, and she wears two strands of white and gray pearls and three red necklaces. Her shoulders slope down, and her arms hang by her sides. The garnet-red bodice of her dress is cut low over a white undergarment. Red straps loop up over her mostly bare shoulders. Sapphire-blue sleeves leave the shoulders exposed and have black bands at the cuffs, which fall short of her wrists. An apron tied around her waist is loosely painted with deep red flowers and dark green leaves against a parchment-brown background. Her long skirt is midnight blue in the shadows. She holds a shimmering object in her right hand, to our left, and rests her other hand on the brown stone wall that runs behind her thighs. A tree edges into the scene along the right, and a few white stucco houses with flat, red roofs cluster on a rocky hill in the distance behind the woman, to our left. The cliffs span most of the background and end in a sheer face near the right edge of the canvas. The sky is tinged with peach at the horizon glimpsed at the foot of the cliff but is mostly steely gray. The artist signed the lower left corner, “COROT.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Agostina

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Date
1866
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 132.4 x 97.6 cm (52 1/8 x 38 7/16 in.) framed: 173.7 x 138.4 cm (68 3/8 x 54 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1963.10.108
Credit line
Chester Dale Collection
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CF
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • French
  • female
  • figure
  • French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Part I: Before Impressionism [1800-1859]
  • Romantic
  • Three-quarters
  • Ethnic, Italian
Provenance

Breysse, Paris, by 1875.[1] Jean-Baptiste Faure [1830-1914], Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, 29 April 1878, no. 15). Jules Paton, Paris, by 1884.[2] Acquired 1906 by (Boussod Valadon et Cie., successeur de Goupil et. Cie, Paris); sold 1908 to Josse et Gaston Bernheim;[3] in the private collection of Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by 1909; purchased June 1931 through (Etienne Bignou) by Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York;[4] bequest 1963 to NGA. [1] Lent by Breysse to _Exposition de l'oeuvre de Corot_, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1875, no. 52, as _Etude de femme_. [2] According to Chester Dale papers in NGA curatorial files. The painting does not appear in the only recorded sale of the Paton collection, held 24 April 1883. [3] Goupil et. Cie/Boussod Valadon et. Cie Stock Book no. 15, p. 165, no. 28865, Getty Research Institute. [4] Lent by Bernheim-Jeune to _Rétrospective de figures de Corot_, Salon d'Autumne, Paris, 1909, no. 11, as _l'Italienne Agostina_, according to Chester Dale papers in NGA curatorial files. A photograph of this painting is included among the albums from the gallery of Etienne Bignou now at the Documentation, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (copies in NGA curatorial files), which suggests that Bignou was in possession of the picture at one time, probably in conjunction with Bernheim-Jeune. A letter dated 7 August 1931 from Bignou to M. Knoedler & Co., New York, details shipping instructons, M. Knoedler & Co. Records, Getty Research Institute (copy NGA curatorial files).

Inscription

lower left: COROT

NGA object ID 46583. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.