Realism Abroad

Adolph Menzel

The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes)

1872–75

Oil on canvas, 158 × 254 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Workers drag a white-hot iron bloom through the rollers to make a railway rail.

• In 1872 Menzel traveled to an ironworks in Upper Silesia to draw the machines and the men.
• The Berlin museum notes that no factory owner commissioned it.
• The museum calls a factory scene on this scale unprecedented in Europe.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain