Souvenir of a Meadow at Brunoy

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875)

about 1855–65

Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas

Dimensions90.5 x 115.9 cm (35 5/8 x 45 5/8 in.)

Credit LineGift of Augustus Hemenway in memory of Louis and Amy Hemenway Cabot

Accession number16.1

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

ProvenanceBy 1875 until at least 1878, Louis Latouche, Paris [see note 1]. Early 1880s, acquired in France by Thomas Robinson for Seth Morton Vose (b. 1831 - d. 1910), Vose Gallery, Providence, R.I.; by 1887, sold by Vose to Mary Tileston (Mrs. Augustus) Hemenway (b. 1820 - d. 1894) [see note 2]; by descent to her daughter, Amy Hemenway Cabot (b. 1849 - d. 1911), Boston; 1911, by inheritance to her husband, Louis Cabot (b. 1837 - d. 1914), Boston; 1915, by inheritance to Amy Cabot's brother, Augustus Hemenway, Jr. (b. 1853 - d. 1931), Milton, MA; 1916, gift of Augustus Hemenway to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 6, 1916)

NOTES:
[1] He lent the painting to the exhibitions "Corot," École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1875 (cat. no. 193) and "Maîtres Modernes," Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1878 (cat. no. 120), according to Alfred Robaut, "L'oeuvre de Corot: catalogue raisonné et illustré" (1905), vol. 3, cat. no. 2417 and notes in the MFA curatorial file.

[2] According to information provided by Robert C. Vose, Vose Galleries (July 7, 1988). In 1915, Mrs. Hemenway's son, Augustus Hemenway, recalled that his mother had purchased the Corot painting for $10,000 about twenty years earlier. See: "Corot Picture to Art Museum," Boston Evening Globe, March 18, 1915.

In the nineteenth century, the painting was called "Ville d'Avray" and was published in Mrs. Hemenway's collection by E. Durand-Greville, "La Peinture aux États-Unis," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1887, p. 67 and Camille Thurwanger, "Corot," The New England Magazine, 5, no. 6 (February, 1892), p. 700.