La dentellière

In a calm Dutch interior a seated woman bends over a piece of lace worked with a bobbin; placed beside an open window, she wears a black dress and cap with a white collar, while household objects line the floor, the wall and the buffet at the back, the tablecloth to the right turned up at its edge. Nicolaes Maes, a pupil of Rembrandt, devoted the early part of his career to just such genre scenes — silent figures absorbed in domestic tasks in light-filled rooms, painted with the dramatic chiaroscuro and warm reds and browns he had learned from his master. The lace-maker absorbed in her work was among his favourite subjects. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.