I thought I'd like to share my two favourite knitting paintings with you. There are a lot of knitting paintings in existence, perhaps not surprisingly, because knitting was a necessary part of women's daily lives for centuries. Some of the paintings have captured some lovely moments in knitting.
I first saw the painting above at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2000. It is Les Sabots, painted in 1768 by the French painter François Boucher. The woman depicted here has a figure and colouring not dissimilar from mine (her hair looks more reddish in the original painting than it does in this reproduction), and has taken her knitting along on a picnic only to get a little... distracted, which is totally something I would do. I told the man I was seeing at the time that it was "our" painting, but although he agreed that the parallels were fun, he sniffed that he didn't like pastorals. So the painting became just my painting.
This is another painting that I saw at the AGO, and the original is actually quite large (60" x 40"). It's Gossip, painted in 1888 by a Canadian artist, George Agnew Reid. I love that the spinning wheel is at a standstill and that the knitting is lying idle, because these two women are so intent on their conversation. And we don't know what they're talking about, but it seems a sure bet that it's something really good.
If there's a knitting-themed painting you love, feel free to tell us about it and link to it in the comments.
