Van Gogh painted this woman shearing sheep ‘in a colour scale ranging from lilac to yellow’. He said so in a letter he wrote to his brother Theo from the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy where he was an inmate. Vincent
regained his self-confidence by copying works by other painters. He worked from black-and-white prints, copying the images fairly accurately but choosing the colours himself.
He based this painting on a small wood engraving. It was part of Travaux des champs (‘Work in the Fields’), a ten-part series of prints based on paintings by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875). Vincent wrote, ‘not
having any models for the moment it will ensure […] that I don’t lose sight of the figure.’
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