Mademoiselle de Foudras

Corot's late figure painting 'Mademoiselle de Foudras' belongs to the group of poetic studio compositions he produced in the final decade of his life alongside his landscapes, depicting women in period costume or in settings suggestive of poetry and reverie. These figure paintings, less well known than his landscapes, reveal a different aspect of his imagination — meditative, slightly melancholy, drawn to the quality of a particular kind of female presence in interior light. Corot was already in his late seventies when he painted this work in 1872, and these late figure studies have a quality of personal reflection that contrasts with the more public address of his landscapes.

Corot renders his subject with the soft, atmospheric modeling characteristic of his late work — the figure emerging from a warm, slightly indefinite background with the same feathery delicacy he brought to foliage.