Achille Glisenti, Italian
Do You Folks Actually Like This Painting? I Think It’s Only Sew-Sew, 1890
Oil on panel
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (Google translated, if necessary), and here (Google translated, if necessary), perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page.
/// Here Glisenti paints two Women Sewing.
Many bright colored items are showing,
and I’m not comprehending.
Are there holes they are mending?
Or is one giant crazy quilt growing?
/// In strong sunlight, in silence, they stitch.
Making quilts, they will never get rich.
Fingers cramp up with pain
and their eyesight they strain
to, from prismatic patches, make kitsch.
/// They wear black with small accents of white.
Do they dream of gowns, vivid and bright?
No, those hues won’t adorn
them, such clothes aren’t worn.
(If one tried, she’d a scandal ignite.)
/// Their job’s tough, and the boss isn’t pleasant;
he berates them whenever he’s present:
“Each stitch even and small.
Waste no fabric at all.”
Still… it’s better than being a peasant.
/// Precise piecework jobs give them no peace.
Fickle rules from their boss never cease.
So, for fairness they wheedle.
It’s hard threading that needle.
All his orders seem sparked by caprice.
/// As she sewed, each young woman grew dreamy,
“How I long for a lover who’d free me
from my days of distress
as a low-paid seamstress,
to a life that’s less stress-ful and seam-y.”