1870
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Interrupted Reading is a 1870 oil by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows a woman sitting in a room, looking up from a book. She's surrounded by simple furniture and a few plants. The artist used warm colors to create a cozy atmosphere. The woman's expression is quiet and thoughtful. Her face is gentle, and her eyes are cast downward. The room is plain, with a few objects scattered around. The painting feels calm and intimate. To learn more about the use of light and shadow in this painting, look up the technique of chiaroscuro.
Interrupted Reading is among the most compelling of Camille Corot’s late figure paintings. Corot almost never exhibited these studies of the human form, preferring instead to publicize the idyllic landscapes that were his specialty. To emphasize the private nature of Interrupted Reading , Corot enclosed his model within the protective environment of the artist’s studio. The mood of the painting is introspective and somewhat melancholic, the very essence of the Romantic sensibility. The muse-like image of a woman reading a book was a popular one in nineteenth-century art, but Corot chose to…
M. Jules de La Rochenoire (1825-1899), Paris by 1875 [see Paris 1875]. Alexandre Dumas fils, Paris by 1882; his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, February 16, 1882, lot 15, as La Rêverie, figure, bought in for 2,450 francs; his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, May 12-13, 1892, lot 24, as La Rêverie, sold for 4,300 francs to Durand-Ruel, Paris [stock no. 2212, according to Paris, Ottawa, New York 1996]; sold for 20,000 francs to Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago, on May 17, 1892; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1922.
Paris, L’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition de l’Oeuvre de Corot, 1875, cat. 93. Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Museum, Exhibition of French Paintings of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, March 6-April 6, 1929, cat. 12. New York, Museum of Modern Art, Corot-Daumier: Eight Loan Exhibition, October 16-November 13, 1930, cat. 29 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1933, cat. 231 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1934, cat.…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (UK: KORR-oh, US: kə-ROH, kor-OH; French: ; 16 July 1796 – 22 February 1875), or simply Camille Corot, was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching.
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