The Spinner

The subject of this painting is an elderly couple in the main room of a very modest home. The woman spins yarn while the man sits with his hands folded over a walking stick. In Leiden, one of the leading centres of the Dutch cloth trade, spinning was a widespread cottage industry, with both men and women doing piecework at home, supplying yarn to factory looms.

This painting, signed with initials and dated, is a typical work by Brekelenkam.