The Spinner, William-Adolphe Bouguereau Business Card

The Spinner. The painting depicts a woman hand-spinning by means of a drop spindle. Her left hand contains a distaff which the fibres to be spun are bound. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 – 1905) was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects with a heavy emphasis on the female human body. Although he created an idealised world, his almost photo-realistic style was popular with rich art patrons. He was very famous in his time but today his subject matter and technique receive relatively little attention compared to the popularity of the Impressionists.