Woman Carding Wool

Painted in 1856 and now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Woman Carding Wool depicts the time-consuming process of preparing raw wool fibres for spinning — a fundamental domestic industry in rural France. Millet's sustained attention to textile production — carding, spinning, sewing — reflects his understanding that peasant women's labour extended far beyond the visible drama of harvest into the quieter, repetitive work of maintaining a household. The Van Gogh Museum's ownership of this canvas is historically resonant: Vincent van Gogh, who worshipped Millet and collected prints after his paintings, would have known this image well. Van Gogh described Millet as someone who had succeeded in expressing the serious, the grave — qualities he saw in exactly such scenes of concentrated domestic labour. The carding of wool involves drawing the fibres repeatedly across toothed paddles to align them, and Millet captures the posture this repetitive motion creates — the figure bent forward, arms working in rhythm, wholly absorbed in the task.

Millet placed the figure close to the picture plane, filling much of the canvas with the working body and making the space feel intimate and immediate. The carding paddles and fleece are described with particular material attention — their textures distinct from the rougher treatment of background and clothing.