Vente Paris, Artcurial, 26 novembre 2015, lot 128 

Acquis lors de cette vente par l'actuel propriétaire

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Martin Dieterle et Claire Lebeau, Sixième supplément à l’œuvre de Corot par A. Robaut et E. Moreau-Nélaton (Paris, 1905), 2023, mise à jour numérique février 2026, p. 152, n° 154, repr.

Time has suspended its flight.

As if answering the poetic call of Lamartine, the brush of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot gives us an image of a remarkable gentleness, a them rarely presented by the artist, who was more inclined to paint portraits, nudes and particularly landscapes. This small oil on canvas, rapidly executed, is incredibly true to life. It is a stolen moment where intimacy is captured, an image fixed for eternity as if by a daguerreotype. According to Martin Dieterle, Corot painted this small work in the years 1840-1850. Photography at the time was beginning to grow and we know the impact it had on painters and the extent to which Corot embraced it, sometimes posing in front of the camera but also working with glass negatives.

Is it the morning or the afternoon? The young girl’s sleep seems deep enough to drown out the sound of Corot stealing her image with his confident, deft brushstrokes. The artist seems to have been rather reluctant to present his figure paintings to a wider audience, drawing a clear distinction between his public output and his more intimate work, reserved for a smaller circle of connoisseurs or close friends, who were more likely to appreciate it. The critic Charles Asselineau thus describes how attached the painter was to these figure studies: “I shall take the liberty of using the title of this article to draw attention to a type of painting that Mr Corot has, until now, scarcely allowed to leave his studio. I am referring to his studies as a figure painter. The care with which Mr Corot keeps these studies hidden from the public may make what I am about to say seem like an indiscretion” (1)

1.       1851, as quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Corot, le peintre et ses modèles, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, 2018, p. 25.