The Floor Scrapers

1875

Oil on canvas, 102 × 147 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Three workmen plane the floor of a bare room, seen from above. It is one of the first large exhibition pictures of city laborers.

Earlier painters of labor showed peasants and country workers. Caillebotte chose city tradesmen, carrying the Impressionist interest in modern urban life into the world of work.
Rejected by the Salon in 1875, it was shown at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876.
Trained under Léon Bonnat, Caillebotte drew each part separately, then transferred it with a squared grid.
Look at the curls of wood shaved from the boards, lit from the balcony door.
Given to the French state by Caillebotte's heirs in 1894.

The bare-chested workers look more like classical nudes than real tradesmen. Unlike Millet or Courbet, the museum notes, Caillebotte makes no moral or political point.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain