The Stone Breakers

The Stone Breakers. Gustave Courbet. 1849 C.E. (destroyed in 1945). Oil on canvas.

• Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing. 
• Courbet's painting are set against a low hill of the sort common in the rural French town of Ornans, where the artist had been raised and continued to spend a much of his time.
• The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped. he has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labor. 
• An accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. There is a close affiliation between the narrative and the formal choices made by the painter, meaning elements such as brushwork, composition, line, and color.
•  Courbet's brushwork is rough—this suggests that the way the artist painted his canvas was in part a conscious rejection of the highly polished, refined Neoclassicist style that still dominated French art in 1848. 
• Traditionally, an artist would spend the most time on the hands, faces, and foregrounds; Courbet refuses to focus on the parts of the image that would usually receive the most attention. 
• He attempts to be even-handed, attending to faces and rock equally, showing that the laborers are as worthless. 
• The Stonebreakers seems to lack the basics of art (things like a composition that selects and organizes, aerial perspective and finish).