Woman Sewing

By Drharrietd @drharrietd

Felix Valloton, Interior with Two Figures (1904) is the title of this painting. I find it really intriguing for at least two reasons. First of all, the composition is interesting -- the carpet and the bed in the foreground, the two women in the middle distance, the standing woman, and the bed, reflected in a mirror. And then, of course, there's the story the picture tells. Not a particularly unusual one, but so very much of its time -- the comfortable bourgeois household, the woman about to go out -- visiting, perhaps -- the maid crouching over the mending. I get the feeling she's waiting for her wrap to be mended before she goes and I wonder very much about the relationship between these two.