Work Interrupted

Bouguereau painted this in 1891, a young woman winding wool interrupted by a small Cupid who leans in to tease at her ear. The distaff and thread make her a picture of patient work, and love has stopped it. He finished the surface with the flawless, almost invisible brushwork that made him one of the most admired and expensive painters in France. By 1891 that kind of polished mythological scene was already going out of fashion. The Impressionists had been exhibiting for years, and younger painters were pulling away from everything Bouguereau represented, though wealthy collectors still paid enormous sums for his work. It went across the Atlantic to Amherst College in Massachusetts, where it hangs today in the Mead Art Museum.