La Cardeuse (The Wool Carder)

Jean-François Millet's etching depicts a seated woman carding wool, a common domestic labor of rural France. Working by candlelight, she holds carding combs while processing fibers into usable thread. Millet captures the figure with anatomical precision and careful cross-hatching, techniques inherited from Old Master printmaking. This subject—dignified manual work in intimate domestic space—became central to Millet's artistic vision. The print exemplifies mid-nineteenth-century etching practice, where artists combined traditional draftsmanship with the immediacy of the printing press, reaching wider audiences than painting alone allowed.