In June 1889, the recently married artist Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859–1933) and his wife Emma Ciabatti (1860–1933) invited the newlywed Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925) and her husband Theo van Gogh (1857–1891) to dine with them at the newly opened Eiffel Tower: ‘Tuesday, we have been invited to dine on the Eiffel Tower by Mr Corcos and his wife – I am very eager to know how that trip up will be,’ Jo wrote to her mother-in-law Anna van Gogh-Carbentus (1819–1907). From 1881 to 1896, Corcos was under contract with the art gallery Goupil (formally Boussod, Valadon & Cie as of 1884), where he was one of the best-selling artists in the 1880s. He developed a good rapport with Theo, who was the manager of the gallery’s Montmartre location , as evidenced by their correspondence, this friendly dinner invitation and the painting Portrait of a Young Woman (1880), which Corcos gifted Theo in 1884.
Success in Paris: A Winning Formula and its Downside
Originally from Livorno, Corcos began his formal art training in 1875 at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and later in Naples. His talent was quickly recognized, earning him praise for his deft brushwork and the refined finish of his paintings. After completing his education, Corcos ventured to Paris, arriving there in the autumn of 1880. Initially, the young artist supported himself by painting fans and decorating sheet music, but he soon found success with his paintings. Corcos lived in Paris until 1886, where his work was highly appreciated, attracting numerous patrons and customers. The contemporary press characterized him as follows: 'Mr Corcos exhibits young English girls by the sea, white on white, a tour de force by a colourist who loves grey tones. Mr Corcos is a young painter from Livorno, a newcomer, or a recent arrival, in the capital […] he is concerned with modernity, escaping from the most prosaic city in Italy, he has come here to burn his wings like an expatriate butterfly, but his success at the last Salon has already rewarded his efforts.'
During his years in Paris, Corcos participated in the Salon three times. His entries included At the Brasserie (À la brasserie) (no. 531) in 1881, The Birthday (L’Anniversaire) (no. 646) in 1882, and Portrait (no. 614) in 1885. His first submission, a depiction of men playing cards in a café, was described as mondaine, and was reproduced by the engraver Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) in the magazine L’Art (). The female portrait that Corcos exhibited in 1885 garnered attention in several reviews.
Corcos’s rise to prominence in Paris, however, was largely due to his contract with the Goupil art gallery. It was his successful compatriot Giuseppe De Nittis (1846–1884) who introduced him to this prestigious institution. In February 1881, the young Corcos sold his first painting through Goupil, marking the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. He signed a contract with the gallery that would last until 1896. Corcos was certainly not the only Italian artist to establish a partnership with Goupil. From the late 1860s – and even more so during the 1870s – numerous Italian artists relocated to Paris, either temporarily or permanently, and sold their work through the gallery. Maison Goupil’s archives reveal that over the years, around a hundred Italians accounted for the sale of over a thousand works of art. Among them were celebrated figures such as De Nittis himself, Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931) and Federico Zandomeneghi (1841–1917). Exhibiting and selling work through Goupil significantly boosted these artists’ international fame. They painted for the market, tailoring their subjects and style to the preferences of Goupil’s clientele.
Corcos worked closely with Theo van Gogh for many years. Theo had settled permanently in Paris in 1879 and was promoted to branch manager of the business on boulevard Montmartre as of 1 January 1881. Corcos’s first sale through Goupil roughly coincided with Theo’s new role. The two had arrived in Paris not long apart and were contemporaries, which undoubtedly fostered a bond between them. Both were foreigners striving to succeed in the French capital, each pursuing this ambition in his own way. During Theo’s tenure as gallery manager – which lasted until his physical and mental deterioration forced him to step down in October 1890 – Goupil’s records list some 250 artists. While about half of them made only one sale, others sold dozens. Between 1881 and 1890, Corcos sold 71 works of art, making him one of the gallery’s best-selling artists during the decade that Theo operated the boulevard Montmartre branch.
Corcos’s work at Goupil did not go unnoticed: ‘Passers-by on boulevard Montmartre are invited to stop in front of Goupil’s […]. There, they will be able to see […] three charming paintings by a young painter, M. Corcos.’ One of these paintings was Tell Me Everything! (Dis-moi tout!) (1883) (), an excellent example of the type of work that brought him such success. It depicts an anecdotal scene of two fashionable women on a boulevard, with the sea stretching out behind them beneath an imposing sky. The title, Tell Me Everything!, captures the curiosity of the woman in blue, who eagerly listens as the young woman in white recounts all that has transpired with her lover, who has just sailed away. She gazes wistfully at the ship on the horizon. With this motif and similar works, Corcos introduced something fresh and unique to the saturated Parisian art market, carving out his niche as an outsider in a highly competitive arena. Following Goupil’s proven business model, the gallery produced reproductions of this painting and other works by Corcos, significantly amplifying the artist’s reach.
Vittorio Matteo Corcos, Tell Me Everything! (Dis-moi tout!), 1883, oil on canvas, 93 × 60 cm, private collection. Sold through Goupil in 1884. Auctioned at Dorotheum, Vienna, 24 October 2018: 19th Century Paintings, lot 534.
Corcos’s recognizable formula – delicately painted, easily digestible genre scenes and winsome female portraits – brought him commercial success but came with its own challenges. In a letter of condolence to Theo following the death of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Corcos praised Vincent as an artist of ‘genuine feeling’ (vrai sentiment) whose work had made an indelible impression on him. Corcos then compared Van Gogh to himself: ‘an artist, like myself, a poor plodder, condemned to produce an art that goes against my feelings, an art of rouge and powder that I feel no love for and which I will have to go on producing for God knows how long!’ Although Corcos’s paintings were in high demand, unlike Van Gogh’s, he derived little personal satisfaction from them, as this heartfelt letter reveals.
Portrait of a Young Woman: A Subdued Portrait
From the inscription in the lower-right corner of Portrait of a Young Woman, it appears that Corcos gifted this painting to his gallery manager and friend Theo in 1884. It departs from Corcos’s customary repertoire. It is not a genre scene with a sentimental or anecdotal subject, nor does it feature fashionable women sporting the very latest trends. Moreover, the depiction is less precisely painted than usual for the artist. In this likeness, Corcos embraced a more ambiguous and understated approach.
The subject is a young woman shown in three-quarter profile, dressed in sober black, her hair plaited and with plain black studs in her ears. Her downcast eyes lend her an air of subdued introspection or even shyness. Sparse light enters from the upper left, partially veiling her face in shadow. Painted using the sfumato technique – where forms lack sharp outlines and are subtly blended – the refined, layered application of the paint achieves a somewhat hazy effect, the contrasts of light and dark gradually merging into one another. The background, a simple, brown-toned ground, harmonizes with the model’s black clothing, brown hair and pale complexion. The result, Portrait of a Young Woman, is a lesson in subtle simplicity: restrained, yet effective in its composition, muted palette, interplay of light and dark, and the model’s expression.
Until the publication of the present entry, this portrait was dated 1884. However, while Corcos’s dedication to Theo van Gogh is indeed from that year, a scarcely visible inscription at the lower left reads ‘Mzo 1880’. This indicates that while the painting was presented to Theo as a gift in 1884, it was actually painted as early as March 1880. This is further confirmed by a worn handwritten label on the stretcher: ‘Mars 1880 // Tête d’étude // Ecole des Beaux Arts // Naples’ (March 1880 // Study of a Head // Academy of Fine Arts // Naples) (). Since the label does not mention Theo as the owner, it may well have been applied before 1884.
Label on the verso, at the upper left of the stretcher of Portrait of a Young Woman: Mars 1880 // Tête d’étude // Ecole des Beaux Arts // Naples
The painting – a study head – was thus created by Corcos in Naples during the month when he was promoted in his art education to the final level of the painting school. In Naples he had the opportunity to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti thanks to a scholarship. He sought to continue his studies there precisely because he was eager to learn from the highly regarded artist Domenico Morelli (1823–1901). Morelli welcomed him with open arms, and Corcos’s training progressed smoothly. Compared to other early works by Corcos, Portrait of a Young Woman is most closely related to Head of a Woman (Testa di donna) (c. 1878), also a sober, evocative likeness (). According to the catalogue Vittorio Corcos: Il fantasma e il fiore (1997), which accompanied one of the few monographic exhibitions on the artist, curated by the Corcos expert Ilaria Taddei, this portrait is typical of Corcos’s Neapolitan years in terms of palette and use of chiaroscuro. Furthermore, the choice of a dark background and the smooth brushstrokes reflect the influence of his teacher Morelli. These characteristics also apply to Corcos’s Portrait of a Young Woman, supporting the new dating of March 1880. The young artist will have taken the successful portrait to Paris, presumably to show it to new contacts as proof of his ability.
This new, earlier dating effectively explains why the portrait differs from Corcos’s usual Parisian work: it was not painted for the market there. While Corcos could have given a more recent commercial piece to Theo, he instead chose to dedicate this intimate portrait to him. Presumably, the portrait pleased the artist, as he had taken it to Paris years before. At the same time, a more recent, commercially viable painting would have been a gift of greater financial value. Either way, Corcos most likely gave it to Theo out of gratitude for their successful business dealings and the good relationship they had established in the process. Corcos, Theo and the Goupil firm all reaped the rewards of this collaboration.
Corcos left Paris in 1886 and married and settled in Florence in 1887. However, this did not end his contract with Goupil, and thus his contact with Theo. From Italy, he continued to produce paintings that were traded in Paris. This is evident, for example, from a letter Corcos wrote to Theo in the summer of 1886: ‘Your letter has surprised me while I was hard at work for you. I am busy on a small, very delicate portrait of a woman, quite in the style of those you had from me in the past.’ It has been assumed in the literature that this letter refers to Portrait of a Young Woman. However, this is not the case. The painting is dated by the artist to 1880, while the letter in question is from 1886. Additionally, Portrait of a Young Woman is dedicated to Theo in 1884, whereas the letter clearly speaks of a portrait intended for sale: ‘I am certain you will not keep it for even a week.’
Corcos enjoyed great international fame during his lifetime, but his painting led an anonymous existence in the estate of Theo van Gogh for decades. Upon the death of Jo van Gogh-Bonger in 1925, the entire collection became the property of Jo and Theo’s son, Vincent van Gogh (‘the Engineer’, 1890–1978), who, beginning in the 1950s, organized several exhibitions focused on the art collection of his father’s and uncle’s contemporaries. The accompanying catalogues, however, reveal that no one knew the true maker of Portrait of a Young Woman. Over the years, various misinterpretations of the inscriptions on the portraits succeeded one another. In these catalogues, as well as on old inventory cards, the work was variously attributed to J.B.C. Corot, L. Cabat, L. Corosza, and L. Corocz.
In Prayer: The Rediscovery of Corcos
It was only after the Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973 that Portrait of a Young Woman could finally be correctly attributed again to its true maker: Vittorio Matteo Corcos. On 10 May 1974, Emile Meijer (1921–2002), the museum’s then director, received a letter from Christie’s. Christopher Wood (1941–2009), head of the auction house’s nineteenth-century art department, had recognized Corcos’s signature during a visit to the museum, where Portrait of a Young Woman was on display among other paintings by Van Gogh’s contemporaries (). The signature matched one on a painting by Corcos set to be auctioned at Christie’s in London on 14 June of that year. Meijer responded with a light-hearted letter in which he pretends to speak at the behest of the young woman in the portrait: 'On behalf of the young lady with the rather indistinct signature I thank you most heartily for your discovery of her master. The young lady would have been most pleased to know that you are offering a second painting by her favourite artist in your sale of June 14th next. She urges me to go to London and to bid for the painting of which you sent me a photograph. Please let me know the estimated price.'
Meijer put his money where his mouth was: the museum purchased In Prayer at the auction in London for £1,050.
A reproduction of In Prayer appeared in the 1889 Christmas issue of the magazine L’Illustration, suggesting it was probably painted in or shortly before that year. In the painting, a young woman kneels behind a chair, holding a prayer book. Her stylish and luxurious black clothing suggests that she may be a widow. She gazes directly at the viewer with wide eyes, ignoring the prayer book. In contrast, the elderly woman behind her, presumably her chaperone, is absorbed in prayer. Unlike the undefined background of Portrait of a Young Woman, here the painter paid close attention to the church interior. Stone steps are visible behind the chair at the left, and in the upper-right corner the ornate wrought ironwork of a gate can be seen, possibly with an altar behind it. The work is exemplary of the ever-popular genre scenes that Corcos continued to produce after returning to Italy.
The fact that the collection was expanded in 1974 to include In Prayer is extraordinary. Only three paintings by contemporaries of Van Gogh were acquired in the first decade after the museum opened. The acquisition budget and policy would only begin to take shape in earnest starting in 1986. Thanks to this exceptionally early acquisition, Portrait of a Young Woman could finally be appreciated and acknowledged as a gift to Theo by one of the best-selling artists of his years at Goupil.
Lisa Smit
May 2025