The Stonebreakers

1849

Oil on canvas. Formerly Gemäldegalerie, Dresden; lost during the Second World War

Two road workers, one too old and one too young for the job, break stones by a roadside.

Shown at the Salon of 1850–51; the Dresden picture is known today from photographs, and a smaller version survives in Winterthur.
In a letter he said the two men he saw by the road were "the most complete expression of poverty."
Their faces are turned away or shaded, so they stand for a kind of work rather than two individuals.
Jonathan Ribner of Boston University contrasts its stiff, piece-by-piece composition with the flowing unity of Millet's figures.
One of the first pictures to show manual labor plainly, without uplift.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain