Attributed to Jean-François Millet

Mrs Douglas H. Lewis (by 14 May 1940);

Thence by descent to present owner.

This small study of a seated woman sewing in a modest interior bears a stamped signature at lower left, J.F.Millet, suggesting it is by the 19th-century French Realist painter Jean-François Millet. While the painting is not recorded in the catalogue raisonne, a 1901 letter from the artist’s son-in-law, Hippolyte Heymann, names Millet’s wife as the sitter and dates the canvas to the 1840s, a period of production for which we have little surviving, or at least adequately identified, work by the artist. A Knoedler framing label on the reverse, that corresponds to number 31520, corroborates the present ownership and confirms that the painting as of 1940 was still considered to be a work by Millet.