Luis Cadena is one of the most important nineteenth-century painters from Ecuador. He was an apprentice of renowned Ecuadorean painter Antonio Salas (1790–1860). In addition, in 1852 Cadena traveled to Chile, where he met French painter Raymond Monvoisin (1790–1870), who had a decisive impact on Cadena’s style. After returning to Quito in 1857, Cadena received a government grant to study in Rome, where he made several copies of famous masters such as Rubens. In 1860, he returned to Quito and received the support of President Gabriel García Moreno to open an arts academy to educate the local youth. By 1872, Cadena was named director of the newly established Escuela de Bellas Artes (School of Fine Arts). In tandem with his pedagogic work, Cadena was especially favored by the Augustinians, Dominicans, and Jesuits, for whom he fulfilled several important commissions in Quito; he also created a number of society portraits. This depiction of an indigenous woman spinning embodies Cadena’s interest in subjects of everyday life (both a legacy of the colonial era and the increasing secularization of painting) and a more academic visual vocabulary.