La Liseuse

La Liseuse (The Reader) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Jean-Jacques Henner. It is sometimes also known as Marie-Madeleine Lisant (“Mary Magdalene reading”) and it is Henner’s most famous work.

It was painted around 1883 and was exhibited in the salon of 1883 along with its sister work, La Religieuse. It was bought from the salon by Alfred Chauchard for 20,000 francs. In 1910 it was left to the state in his will and taken into the collections of the Louvre. In 1981 it was assigned to the new Musée d'Orsay and since 2016 it has been on display at the Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner, also in Paris.

A smaller painting by Henner on a wooden panel of the same subject was acquired by fr: Victor Antoine Desfossés and later sold at auction from the Desfossés collection in 1899 for 3,100 francs.