MASP

By Luciano Migliaccio
Corot attended secondary school in Rouen where he lived with the Sennegons, drapers by trade and friends of his father. Laurent-Denis Sennegon married Corot’s sister, Annette-Octavie. Corot painted portraits of members of the Sennegon family; eleven of these are known, two of them are at the Louvre. These portraits – the making of which allowed Corot, himself a preeminently landscape artist, to feel at ease with benevolent models with whom he maintained close and intimate relationships – rank among his most notable figurative paintings. The portrait in the Masp Collection – Portrait of Laurent-Dennis Sennegon – remained in the Sennegon family until 1948, when Mme. Blanché, the last descendant of the original model, entrusted it to art dealer Alfred Daber.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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