Portrait of a Woman 

Camille Corot painted this portrait of a woman on canvas sometime in the mid-19th century. Corot, who was a famous landscape painter in France, here turns his attention to portraiture. It seems like Corot made his name painting idealized visions of the French countryside, but let’s think about the social context in which Corot was working. What kind of social expectations were being put on display here? This portrait is interesting because it is not clear whether it critiques or perpetuates those expectations. To get a better sense of these issues, we could look at the critical reception of Corot’s art at the time, and how these portraits were displayed in the art institutions of France. Only by doing that kind of digging can we understand the artwork’s full historical meaning.