Why did Camille Corot rarely exhibit his portraits and figure studies?

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Camille Corot: Portrait de l'artiste, assis près d'un chevalet — Camille Corot *Portrait de l'artiste, assis près d'un chevalet* (“Portrait of the Artist, Seated Near an Easel”), oil on paper pasted on canvas by Camille Corot, 1825; in the Louvre, Paris.

Camille Corot rarely exhibited his portraits and figure studies because he considered them to be private works. While he was widely celebrated during his lifetime for his poetic landscapes—which he produced for public exhibition at the Salon—these later figure studies, often depicting young women in his studio, remained personal projects that he almost never shared with the public.1