Woman at the Spinning Wheel

Devoted to his native region of Artois in Northern France, Breton found success as a realist painter depicting rural life there. This elderly spinner appears in the lower left of his painting "Le Dernier Rayon" (The Last Ray of Sunshine), 1885 (current location unknown). Breton’s wife Elodie recorded that her husband began this drawing early in the morning on March 24, 1884, sketching a local woman by the name of Colette. The artist combined fabricated black crayons of various densities, using a remarkably assured, hard, thin line over a softer initial sketch. He depicts her looking over her shoulder while her hands continue her work. In the final composition, she glances toward family members returning home from their labor in the fields.