this picture relates most closely to what the artist was witnessing in his own home, as he wrote to a friend the year the canvas was completed: “I write this, today, November 6th at 9 o’clock in the evening. Everyone is at work around me, sewing, and darning stockings. The table is covered with bits of cloth and balls of yarn. I watch from time to time the effects produced on all this by the light of the lamp. Those who work around me at the table are my wife and grown-up daughters.”