This painting of a girl winding wool is an example of the closely observed genre paintings that brought acclaim to the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze. He mastered the ability to render a range of materials—as seen here in his treatment of the girl’s young, pale flesh; the cat’s fur; the worn wood; the weight of the metal scissors; the soft, billowing fabrics. The letter B carved somewhat roughly into the chair back may refer to his wife’s maiden name, Babuti: they were married in 1759, the same year this picture was first exhibited. Perhaps Greuze’s model is her younger sister; the artist had already painted several portraits of Babuti family members, including his wife, Anne-Gabrielle, and her brother and father.
In this and other paintings, Greuze was occupied with conveying the interior states of his subjects. Here, day-dreaming takes the girl’s attention away from her domestic task. She is oblivious to the collaboration—or interference—of her furry friend, who fixes its eyes on the ball of wool, showing a sharp focus in complete contrast to the girl’s distraction. Should reverie finally cause that ball to drop, the cat is ready to pounce.
Among the early owners of this painting was La Live de Jully, an enthusiastic collector of Greuze’s work, who tried to form a sort of museum of modern French art in the 1750s.
The Wool Winder
Like much of Greuze’s early work, The Wool Winder owes something to Chardin’s genre pictures of the 1730s, which in turn recall the Dutch seventeenth-century genre scenes the French were collecting avidly in the early eighteenth century. But Greuze’s pictures are usually, as here, more whimsical and anecdotal, as well as more refined in execution. The letter B carved into the top rail of the chair suggests that the subject may have been a younger sister of the artist’s wife, Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, whom he married in January of 1759. The Wool Winder, exhibited the same year, is related to a series of portraits of his new family that Greuze exhibited in 1759 and 1761 — likenesses of his wife, of her brother, and of her father, in addition to one of himself.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Marquis de Bandol, bought in 1759. La Live de Jully sale, March 5, 1770, Paris, Lot 114, sold for 950 francs to Catelin. Duc de Choiseul sale, April 6, 1772, Paris, Lot 134, sold for 1,600 francs. Madame la Présidente de Bandeville sale, December 3−10, 1787, Paris, Lot 67, sold for 2,505 livres to Desmarets. Maréchal de Ségur sale, April 9, 1793, Paris, Lot 111, sold for 1,280 livres. Jacques-Joseph de Boussairolles from Abraham Fontanel on 21 May 1805, and sold by his grandson, Charles de Boussairolles, before 1850 to the Duc de Morny. Duc de Morny sale, May 31−June 3, 1865, Paris, Lot 100, sold for 91,500 francs. Duchesse de Sesto sale, June 25, 1894, Paris, sold for 60,000 francs to Montaignac and Sedelmeyer. The Marquess of Hertford. Sir Richard Wallace. Wertheimer. A. Walter, Bearwood (1898). J. Pierpont Morgan. Knoedler. Frick, 1943.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: French, Italian and Spanish. Volume II. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
