The outstanding painting A Girl Reading by Camille Corot (1796–1875) is placed in the context of a selection of Corot’s paintings and drawings providing a key to his creative output in the genre of figure painting.

At the age of 30, Camille Corot wrote that his sole aim in life was to paint landscapes. Nonetheless, he left behind a considerable number of figure paintings. These pictures, much sought after among his admirers and buyers, were rarely exhibited in the salons and had a more private value for the artist.

However, they were far more than a mere pastime; they enabled Corot to find creative solutions for all his basic artistic questions. Initially Corot included models in his landscapes to provide historical and narrative context, but soon these oil studies became autonomous figure paintings with scenic backdrops. In his late work Corot finally liberated his figures from these anecdotal and narrative contexts, painting emotional and spiritual character studies in their own right.

Apart from pivotal essays on Corot as a figure painter and the traditions from which he developed, this book also contains about 30 extensively analysed examples of his works, thus providing a multi-faceted portrayal of the distinctive path of a great artist on the brink of Modernism.