The work is accompanied by the archive of the Institut Courbet with a scientific note by Jean-Jacques Fernier.

We report some significant passages from the file written by Jean-Jacques Fernier, the greatest scholar of the painter: "This painting represents a young peasant woman, sitting on a rock at the foot of a group of trees, on the left, intent on watching over the sheep that can be distinguished around a pond, lightened by the last gleams of a magnificent sky with a reddish twilight, in a countryside already close to night. The atmosphere that can be perceived from this scene, with its few details, opposes the earth and those who live there in an almost monochrome sense to a living sky described in all its nuances".
The periodization is equally important, given that Fernier places its execution between 1859 and 1862, when Courbet joined his friend Baudelaire in Honfleur and subsequently returned to Saintonge in the summer of 1862. In fact, if we look closely, the work takes its cue from the larger painting also depicting La fileuse bretonne but, in this case, leaves room for a more instinctive painting style.
The result is a reminder of nature as interpreted by the Venetians of the Renaissance (and loved by Courbet) in an almost pre-Impressionist style, so vivid is the effect achieved.