And the working class stormed the skies of art

M. Luce, The end of the day, cement unloaders. GRENOBLE MUSEUM

In the 19th century, painters expanded the range of their protagonists, until then reduced to kings, virgins, and mythological heroes. A new social actor was born, the working class, and with it, a new iconography. He has dedicated the Caen Museum of Fine Arts, in Normandy (France), an exhibition that describes the world of work and its mutations. Its titled Burning cities. Art, work, rebellion, and goes from the fall of Napoleon III, the last French monarch, to the start of the First World War.

From that era, marked by impressionism, the country breakfasts, the faded outlines of the water lilies in the ponds and the ballet classes remain for history. They took a back seat, instead, the artists who focused on the men and women who built the Third Republic through their efforts, their workplaces (factories, workshops, fields) and their hopes. They portrayed the heroes and martyrs of the new society. This sample is a sort of rescue.

We contemplate the Steilen workers chatting with their heads down before going to work, the industrial landscapes of Armand Guillaumin, the march of the striking proletariat by Paul Delance … Through these images we understand “Its aesthetic qualities, as well as its symbolic and political charge”says Anne-Sophie Aguilar, a specialist in the cultural and social history of art at the University of Paris-Nanterre.

We see, then, that the artists of the time did not shut themselves up in their studios, but were interested in this social segment. Even the exquisite Degas grabbed his brushes to portray the ironers. And Pisarro couldn’t resist the misty melancholy of the industrial city.
Yes, there was also a time when art completely stopped drawing inspiration from the working class. But that is another story.