In a wallpapered room with a window to our right, a woman to our right sits at a frame holding needlework while a woman wearing a black and white maid’s outfit stands facing her, to our left, in this nearly square painting. Both women have pale complexions and light brown hair loosely pulled up. The woman doing needlework faces our left in profile. She wears a pastel pink shawl or blouse with a long skirt patterned with gray, black, and white. She looks at her work as she pulls a needle and thread with her right hand, farther from us. The needlework is stretched on an easel-like frame so the top can be angled toward the seamstress. The maid wears a white cap and a white apron over a long-sleeved, black dress. She holds a small basket and seems to pull out or sort through yellow and white thread.
The wall behind the women is patterned with bunches of dusky-pink flowers linked by baby-blue ribbons, against a field of pale, golden yellow. Sunlight pours through the window to our right, which is framed with periwinkle-blue curtains. On a table along that wall near us, a vase holds a bunch of leggy, magenta-purple flowers. A painting hanging over the seated woman’s head is done with muted tones of brown, blue, and brick red, and it shows a person on horseback in a landscape. The maid stands in front of a white mantlepiece that holds, from left to right, a white ceramic vase with white and yellow daises, a bronze-colored, sculpted bust of a woman, and a blue and white porcelain plate or bowl tipped up so we see the inside. A wood table with a wide, pedestal foot stands between us and the maid. It is covered with a periwinkle-blue cloth and holds a glass vase with yellow and orange flowers, a sea-glass green lamp with a white shade, a book, and possibly some papers. Lavender and royal-purple cloth is strewn across a wooden chair immediately in front of us, at the bottom center of the painting. The floor is painted with blended shades of mauve, pink, and tan. The artist signed the work with dark paint in the lower right corner: “Gari Melchers.”
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