Real Work

The Realist movement begins in earnest with an image of work. In an 1849 letter to the critic Francis Wey, Gustave Courbet describes the painting he has just completed:
On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over his work, his sledgehammer raised, his skin parched by the sun, his head shaded by a straw hat; his trousers, of coarse material, are completely patched; and in his cracked sabots you can see his bare heels sticking out of socks that were once blue. On the other side is a young man