The small fishing village of Le Pouldu on Cap Finistére in Brittany, south of Concarneau and Pont Aven, is secluded between the Laita river and the sea. The area was known for its sand dunes. There was a ferry that could transport people and livestock across the river. In 1886, there were 11 households in the village. The village was so small that it did not even have a bakery.
Paul Gauguin and six other artists, among them Paul Serusier, Jacob Meyer de Haan, and Armand Seguin, moved in 1890 from Pont Avon to nearby Le Pouldu in search of an even simpler and more genuine life. They stayed at a guesthouse by the beach, La Buvette de la Plage, owned by a woman who had moved there, Marie Henry. As payment for their lodging, Gauguin and his colleagues decorated the dining room's walls and ceiling with local motifs (today recreated using reproductions of the originals).
When Marie Henry later sold the guesthouse, she took these artworks with her.
One of Gauguin's paintings included in this room decoration depicts a Breton woman standing by the sea spinning wool. Gauguin described the painting in a letter to Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh had in 1889 created a painting of a spinner based on a painting by Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875), whose heroic paintings of spinners had been disseminated through engravings. Gauguin and his artist colleagues left Le Pouldu in 1890.

Gerda Roosval was the daughter of bank director consul John Roosval and Johanna Kramer, and sister to art historian Johnny Roosval, journalist Baltzar Roosval, and film producer and cultural journalist Albin Roosval. She completed her academy education in the spring of 1891. In July of the same year, she married her fellow student Gottfrid Kallstenius (1861–1943). Shortly after their wedding, they travelled to Paris for further education. The following year, they visited Le Pouldu from mid-August to November 1891. It is not known where they stayed, but they clearly would have seen Gauguin's and his colleagues' decorations in the dining room at La Buvette de la Plage.

In late autumn 1891 until spring 1892, they were again in Paris where Gerda studied for a time at Académie Colarossi. In 1892, her painting "Breton Woman with Child" executed in Le Pouldu, was exhibited at the Salon (C. Klingberg, "A Blue Hyacinth in Paris. Gerda Roosval-Kallstenius, her world and work", 2009, p. 40, image 53; auction, Bukowskis, "Important Winter Sale", 6 December 2017, cat. no 400).
In the spring of 1892, the couple settled in Grèz-sur-Loing at Madame Chevillon's "Hôtel Seine et Marne" (now Hôtel Chevillon). Gerda returned to Sweden in December 1892 with their son John, born in Grèz, while Gottfrid travelled to Italy to study fresco painting. The family reunited in the autumn of 1893 in Siena. Their time abroad concluded in the summer of 1894 after a brief stop in France.