Sewing Lesson

On 12 May 1874 the French director of fine arts, the Marquis de Chennevières, set aside 50,000 francs for Millet to paint the life of Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, for her chapel in the Panthéon. He was 59 and already ill, and he never painted it. He died at Barbizon in January 1875. This canvas is dated to that last year, 1874. A girl in a dark blue bodice and a red skirt sits by an open window, bent over a white cloth in her lap, while her mother, holding a baby, leans across to guide the needle. A cat sits on the sill at the left. The whole room is painted in warm yellows and browns. Through the window a sunlit garden runs back to a wooden gate, and among the trees beyond it a small figure is at work.