La filatrice

By the autumn of 1889 Van Gogh was living inside the asylum at Saint-Rémy, in the south of France, where he had checked himself in after the breakdown in Arles. On the days he was not allowed out to paint the fields, he worked from prints. His brother Theo sent him black-and-white engravings after Jean-François Millet, the painter of peasant labour Van Gogh had revered since he was young, and he set about putting them into colour. This spinning woman is one of them, lifted from a Millet composition and rebuilt in Van Gogh's own hot palette and restless stroke. He compared what he was doing to a musician playing another composer's music, and called the results translations.