Hans HEYSEN
Germany 1877 – Australia 1968
Australia from 1884; Europe, England 1899-1903

Sewing (The artist's wife) 1913
oil on canvas
Frame 73.0 (h) x 78.0 (w) x 7.0 (d) cm
The Cedars, The Hans Heysen Estate, Hahndorf

In Sewing (the artist’s wife) 1913 Heysen painted an oil portrait of Sallie, showing her sitting at a window, immersed in her work at the sewing machine. Depicting Sallie dressed in blue, and with the light flooding in through the window and radiating over her, he gave her humble task a sense of majesty. The painting has some of the qualities of the works of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Vermeer, such as The astronomer 1668 (Louvre, Paris). Heysen certainly admired Vermeer and reproductions of his works, Girl with a pearl earring and A painter in his studio graced the dining room and studio walls of The Cedars.