Interrupted Reading

This is a large oil painting, about three feet high, of a woman seated alone in a room. She holds a book, but she has stopped reading and lifted her gaze. The room is the artist's studio, and it feels enclosed and private. The mood is quiet, thoughtful and a little sad. She wears a costume with an Italian look, and her figure is built from broad, solid shapes. The painting is oil on canvas, which has been mounted on board for support.

Look first at the broad shapes of the figure. The brushwork is bold and direct, and the body reads as masses that balance one another. Then search for the small touches. Find the ribbon in her hair, near the top of the figure. Look at her delicate earrings beside her face. Finally, lower down, follow the deep folds in her skirt. Notice how the artist set these careful details against the looser, broader painting around them.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, a French artist, painted this around 1870. He was best known for idyllic landscapes, and those were the works he chose to publicize. Studies of the human figure like this one he almost never exhibited. Corot had spent a number of years in Italy and loved everything Italian, so he often dressed his models in Italianate costumes, like the one worn here. By setting his model inside the studio, he stressed how private the painting was.

A woman reading was a popular, muse-like image in nineteenth-century art. Corot kept to that traditional subject but changed the moment, showing his model pausing and looking up from the page. His technique was less traditional. He combined a strong sense of structure with the dreamy softness and intimacy found in his famous landscapes. The mood is introspective and melancholic, which the museum links to the Romantic sensibility. Look once more at her face and lifted eyes, and wonder what has drawn her away from the book.