The Romanticism movement marked the first step away from the Classicist ideals of Renaissance painting. Romantic artists painted with emotion instead of logic, striving to depict the sublimity of nature in their work. Although this was in a step in the right direction, Charles Boudelaire criticized both Classicism and Romanticism for “always depicting the past and neglecting the present” and “challenged artists to paint the ordinary aspects of modern life and to find in them some grand and epic quality” (Chu 258). This statement marks the transition to Realism. Some Realist artists responded to Boudelaire’s call by depicting scenes of labor of ordinary lower class people. In this essay, I will compare five paintings on the subject of work and explain the different approaches each artist used to convey their message. Jean-Francois Millet’s primary objective was to “portray the rural poor as icons: a noble peasantry condemned to backbreaking labor in a harsh environment who nonetheless remain dignified, even achieving spiritual power" (Murphy 1). Man With a Hoe (Figure 1) epitomizes this goal. In this painting, a single isolated man stands hunched over his hoe, mouth sagging, resting from the back-breaking work he endures under the burning sun. The ruthless environment he labors in is accentuated by the dry and barren landscape that surrounds him which also emphasizes his isolation. Nonetheless, the sun shines upon and highlights the laborer’s face and posture, giving him a presence that shows that he commands his space and has full control of the landscape around him. In this way, Millet portrays his character as somewhat of a rural hero, someone that could be respected and looked up to despite his lower class status. Gustave Courbet also depicted rural labor, but instead he desired “to create a dignified, accurate, serious and sympathetic image of rural labour” (Nochlin 121). He wasn’t particularly concerned with creating rural icons as Millet was, but was more interested in invoking compassion for the working class by depicting the tedious jobs that the impoverished had to do. Courbet’s painting, The Stonebreakers (Figure 2), shows two males working, crushing stones into gravel in order to be used for road pavement. In tattered clothes, the men are seen in action, actively working as the viewer watches. The men’s job title, indicative in the painting’s title, tells of how repetitive and laborious their daily work is. Unlike Millet’s Man With a Hoe, there isn’t a vast, fading landscape for the viewer’s eyes to gaze upon. Instead, “a somber wall of hillside blocked the spectator's eye and relentlessly forced his gaze to the figures and their work; perhaps it also represented the cramped oppression of their lives” (Callen 22). By centering his painting on the labor being performed, Courbet is successfully able to appeal to his viewer’s empathy toward the laborer’s task. As opposed to painting scenes of rural labor, Honore Daumier was more interested in the urban working class, particularly of laundry women. Daumier saw that every “Summer and winter, they dragged their loads to the laundry to the river, often with their children in tow” (Chu 265). These women were paid meager wages, but had to work in order to help support her family. The Heavy Burden (Figure 3) is a painting depicting the urban toil of women he witnessed every day. In this painting, a woman is carrying a load of heavy laundry. She has to prop the basket against her hip with both arms grasping it. Her body is twisted and leaning forward to balance the massive weight she carries. And as she does all this, she is also taking care of her child, who clasps her skirt. Daumier wanted to capture “the essence of this woman’s tortured life” (266) in order to invoke sympathy for urban female occupations. Edgar Degas also was interested in the labor of laundresses of his time. In Women Ironing (Figure 4), Degas shows two laundresses at work. One woman holds a bottle a wine as she stretches and the other is consumed in her work as she puts all her strength into pressing down her iron. Degas focuses on the bent over body of the woman capturing “the repetitious and ritualistic aspect of ironing” as well as suggesting “the women’s solitude, their withdrawal, [and] their fatigue” (Lipton 144). Degas was influenced by the social concerns of the naturalists, but being an impressionist, he painted in order to capture a fleeting moment and the focus on the gestures of his characters. This is contrasted to Millet’s attempts at creating heroic icons and also to Courbet and Daumier’s desire to invoke sympathy through the depiction of hard work.
Moving from depictions of rural and urban labor, Adolph Menzel’s Iron Rolling Mill (Figure 5) portrays the lives of industrial workers. It shows the “heat, noise, grime, malodorousness, multiplicity of tasks, and expenditure of extreme muscular effort of the teeming factory scene” (Fried 118). The center of focus is around one mill in which multiple laborers are lit up by the molten iron they work by. Included in the lower right corner are men eating meals, and on the left there are men washing themselves. By including all three processes within the confines of the factory, Menzel hints at the cyclical daily routine of the workers. Although Menzel’s painting could arguably be interpreted to invoke sympathy toward the workers, Menzel was more “interested in the factory as a new kind of heroical subject rather than as a focus for his social concerns” (Chu 318). This is contrasted to Millet, Courbet and Daumier who were definitely motivated by their social concerns for the working class.

Works Cited
Callen, Anthea,. Courbet. London: Jupiter, 1980. Print.
Chu, Petra Ten-Doesschate. Nineteenth-century European Art. New York: Abrams, 2003. Print.
Fried, Michael. Menzel's Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-century Berlin. New Haven: Yale UP, 2002. Print.
Lipton, Eunice, and Edgar Degas. Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women and Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California, 1986. Print.
Murphy, Alexandra R. Jean-François Millet: Drawn into the Light. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1999. Print.
Nochlin, Linda. Realism. (Harmondsworth): Penguin, 1971. Print.

Figures