The Letter
ca. 1865
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
21 1/2 x 14 1/4 in. (54.6 x 36.2 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Gift of Horace Havemeyer, 1929
Accession Number
29.160.33
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the serene glow of Camille Corot's *The Letter* (ca. 1865), a young woman pauses in quiet contemplation, her fingers delicately holding an open letter. Painted during the artist's mature years, this intimate oil-on-wood portrait captures the French master's shift toward poetic figure studies, blending his renowned landscape sensibility with tender human moments. Corot, a of the Barbizon school and precursor to Impressionism, favored small-scale panels like this 21½ × 14¼-inch work for their portability and luminous effects, achieved through thin glazes that evoke soft, diffused light filter...
About the Artist
Camille Corot · 1796–1875
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, born in Paris on July 16, 1796, into a prosperous bourgeois family—his father a former wig maker turned draper, his mother a successful milliner—initially resisted his artistic calling. After a lackluster education at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen and failed apprenticeships in business, he abandoned commerce at age 26, thanks to a generous parental allowance foll...