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Home>Calendar>Talks>The Art of Looking>Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand: The Art of Looking
A young, pale-skinned woman sits with her back to us as she looks at a painting on an easel in a studio in this vertical painting. She sits in a ladder-back wood chair so her knees angle away from us, toward the back right corner of the studio. We look onto the side of her right cheek as she leans forward. Her brown hair is combed back and twisted into a bun wrapped with a raspberry-red ribbon that trails down her back. Touches of pearl white, pale pink, and silvery gray suggest flowers by the ear we can see. A cream-white chemise falls off the shoulder closer to us, under a grass-green bodice. She holds a mandolin down by her right side, which is closer to us, to nestle in the folds of her voluminous, olive-green skirt. She reaches forward with her other hand to touch the lower left corner of the painting resting on the easel. That vertically-oriented scene is loosely painted and shows a few people gathered in a landscape. A white and black dog stands with one front leg lifted to the left of the woman's chair, looking at her. The wall opposite us is parchment white over a strip of molding, like a high chair rail, and muted mauve pink below. An L-shaped pipe leads to an iron stove to our left of center. A narrow shelf tucked into the L of the pipe holds three hand-sized sculptures or casts. Small paintings and plaster casts hang around it on the wall above the molding. The artist signed the painting in the lower right: “COROT.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand, c. 1868, oil on wood, Widener Collection, 1942.9.11

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand

The Art of Looking

  • Friday, March 7, 2025
  • 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
  • Talks
  • Virtual
  • Registration Required
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's Corot's Studio: Woman Seated Before an Easel, a Mandolin in her Hand is the inspiration for this interactive conversation. Join us for a one-hour virtual session and share your observations, interpretations, questions, and ideas about this work of art.

These conversations will encourage you to engage deeply with art, with others, and with the world around you as you hone skills in visual literacy and perspective-taking.

The program is free, open to the public, and is designed for everyone interested in talking about art. No art or art history background is required. Ages 18 and over.

Due to the interactive nature of this virtual program, sessions are not recorded.