The Knitting Girl

By 1869 William-Adolphe Bouguereau was among the most sought-after painters in Paris, a star of the official Salon whose polished technique commanded high prices. This is a quieter product of that success, a young country girl in a red headscarf seated outdoors, absorbed in her knitting. Bouguereau returned again and again to these rural and Italian peasant children, painting them with the same smooth, glassy finish he gave his mythological nudes. The dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who would soon stake his fortune on the Impressionists, bought this canvas straight from the artist in August of that year. It eventually crossed the Atlantic and now hangs in the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.