Provenance
According to the Doria sale catalogue, an inscription formerly on the back of NG 3285 states: ‘Corot avait donné cette étude à M. Panis, professeur de dessin à Sainte Barbe.’ This is possibly the same Jules Ernest Panis (1827–1895) who exhibited at the Salon from 1850 to 1874,23 and it is possible that Corot simply lent it to him for copying. Panis’s name, however, does not appear in the notebook in which Corot wrote a ‘liste d’études prêtées à un grand nombre d’artistes dont les noms suivent….’24; in the collection of Comte Armand Doria (1824–1896); his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 4/5 May 1899, lot 93, bought by Edgar Degas;25 Degas sale, Paris, 26 March 1918, lot 19, bought for 5,600 French francs by special grant for the National Gallery.26