Artnit

A French painter, sculptor, printmaker, newspaper caricaturist, and political satirist Honoré Daumier lived in Paris during troubled political times (the revolutions of 1830 and 1848) and during a time of rapid industrialization and much social unrest. His interest in the French railroad system was based on the fact that this new means of transportation changed the way to move around Paris and the surrounding cities in a dramatic way. Daumier, who also struggled with unemployment at some point in his life, sympathized with the working class and saw them as fellow passengers.

Honoré Daumier's paintings were influenced by rail traveling themes and painted many images on a similar theme since the 1840s. The painting The Third-Class Carriage from 1862 is a depiction of the everyday life of the poor. This painting is one part of a three-part series of paintings by Daumier, including The First-Class Carriage and The Second-Class Carriage. The work can be viewed now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

After moving to Nuenen in the Brabant region in 1883, Vincent van Gogh was inspired to create a portrait of the working class. On 30 April 1885, he wrote to his brother Theo:

"You see, I really have wanted to make it so people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and - that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours - civilized people. So I certainly don't want everyone just to admire it or approve of it without knowing why."

Vincent van Gogh had planned out the painting of The Potato Eaters far in advance and had the inspiration to create a multiple-figure painting in 1883. After completing various sketches and trial paintings of the piece, he created three surviving studies of The Potato Eaters and also printed a lithograph of the work, which he sent to his brother Theo in Paris. Upon completion of The Potato Eaters in 1885, he thought it was his best work to date. But, it was not successful in his lifetime, nor was it displayed at the Salon as he had requested. Today it is considered by many to be Van Gogh's first true masterpiece and can be seen at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

One of the founders of the Barbizon School, the French painter Jean-François Mile is known for his peasant scenes. First exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1863, the painting The Man with a Hoe caused a storm of controversial interpretations at the time because of its depiction of the brutal life to which peasants were subjected. The man in the picture was considered brutish and frightening by the public and critics and the painting itself was a social protest on behalf of peasants. Millet seemed to foresee the response to his work, when he wrote, "The Man with the Hoe will get me into hot water with many people who don't like to be asked to contemplate a different world." The painting is now housed in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

American poet Edwin Markham wrote the poem The Man with the Hoe after he saw a painting called L'homme a la houe by the French artist Jean-François Millet. This poem was first presented publicly at a New Year's party in 1898. It was first published in the San Fransisco Examiner in January 1899 and also reprinted in many other newspapers across the United States because it dealt with the working class. It was used as the opening poem in Markham's 1902 collection The Man with a Hoe and Other Poems.

Gustave Courbet described his inspiration for The Stone Breakers in a November 1849 letter to Francis and Marie Wey:

"I had taken our carriage to go to the Château of Saint-Denis to paint a landscape. Near Maisières I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the road. One rarely encounters the most complete expression of poverty, so right there on the spot, I got an idea for a painting. I made a date to meet them in my studio the following morning, and since then I have painted my picture."

The Stone Breakers by the French painter Gustave Courbet was produced in 1849 and is considered to be one of the famous artworks of the Realism movement. The theme is a scene of everyday life in rural areas. The painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850. Confronted with the unvarnished realism of imagery, critics derided the ugliness of his figures and dismissed them as "peasants in their Sunday best". The painting was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945. Similar work can be viewed at Gemaldegalerie, Dresden.

Eugène Delacroix, the greatest French Romantic painter painted the monumental canvas Liberty Leading the People during the July Revolution of 1830. in Paris that removed Charles X, the restored Bourbon king, from the throne after the fall of Napoleon. This painting is seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment and the start of the Romantic Era. The work was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1831 under the title Scènes de Barricades. It was quickly bought for three thousand francs by Louis-Philippe and exhibited in the Musée de Luxembourg. Seven years after the death of Eugène Delacroix in 1874, it was given to the Louvre, where it has stayed ever since.

Slika Pas laje na mesec iz 1926. godine je jedno od najpoznatijih dela Huana Miroa. Zasnovana je na njegovoj studijskoj skici katalonske narodne priče koja prikazuje psa kako laje na mesec dok mesec gleda dole govoreći: "Znaš, nije me briga". Na njoj je Miro stvorio misteriozno lebdeći svet gde njegov standardni leksikon simbola, ovde merdevina koja simbolizuje ne samo individualnost i bekstvo, već i beskorisnost i izlaz u prazninu smrti, postaje moćan. Danas se ova slika nalazi u Muzeju umetnosti u Filadelfiji.