[Seated woman with a pack basket]

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

Adrien de Witte devotes considerable attention to fine detail and textures in this etching of a country woman in the traditional dress of the region around Liège in Belgium. Women carried their produce to market in big pack baskets. Her stick suggests that she may also have brought along small animals, such as geese or pigs. De Witte was one of the most respected artists of Liège. As a young man he spent five years in Rome, where he resided at the Darchis Foundation, an institution founded in 1699 for the purpose of supporting young men from Liège in their efforts to study art and theology in Rome. He returned to Liège where he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1885 and taught there until 1921. He was director of the Academy from 1910 to 1913. Europe