 
Jean–François Millet
French, 1814–1875
The Knitting Lesson
c. 1860
Oil on panel
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark, 1945
1955.533
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"In a comfortable room with sturdy wooden ceiling beams, tiled floor, a cupboard at the back boasting a row of spoons and a pile of bright white laundry, a knitting lesson is taking place. This passing on of skills and tradition is amplified in pictorial terms. The vaguely pyramidal shape of the woman and girl echoes depictions of the Virgin and Child from the Italian Renaissance, while the leaded windowpanes evoke the prosperous bourgeois interiors seen in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Dressed in the white, red, and blue of the French flag, these French peasants are ennobled by artistic tradition."
Fronia Simpson
Art Historian and Columist for Interweave Knits
Bennington, Vermont
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