Portrait of a Man

Corot was one of the Impressionists’ great heroes and forebears. A founder of the Barbizon school, he was a staunch advocate for the younger generation of avant-garde painters and a sensitive portraitist of fellow artists and other members of his intimate circle. The subject of this portrait may have been one such sitter: he has traditionally been identified as the sculptor François Rude, although documentary evidence for this identification is unresolved. Best known as the sculptor for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Rude was inducted in 1833 into the French Legion of Honor, whose rosette this sitter wears in his lapel.