Peasant women with distaff

"Peasant Women with Distaff" from 1900, now at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, belongs to Grigorescu's final period of active painting, when he was in his early sixties and his health was beginning to decline. The distaff—a tool for holding flax or wool while spinning—had been a symbol of female domestic virtue since antiquity, but in Grigorescu's hands it functions primarily as an element of observed rural reality. Women spinning with distaffs were a common sight in Romanian villages as late as 1900, and Grigorescu had included the tool in various peasant scenes throughout his career. The Brukenthal in Sibiu is one of Romania's oldest museums, founded in the eighteenth century, and holds works from various periods of Romanian and Central European art. That this late Grigorescu found its way to Sibiu, in Transylvania rather than Bucharest, suggests a collecting history that moved across Romanian regional boundaries.

Late-career Grigorescu shows increasing fluency of touch—forms are suggested with maximum economy, and the figures are established quickly and with confidence. The distaff and thread provide a secondary compositional element that helps organize the scene around the women's shared activity.