"The Stone Breakers" by Gustave Courbet, 1849
This painting depicts a very young boy and a very elderly man breaking rocks, presumably so that a road or railway can be built. Courbet made a point of including these two extreme ages in order to show that those who were underprivileged were trapped by poverty, unable to improve their circumstances. The only thing for them to do was their work. The different ages were also included to represent mortality: the boy will grow up to be just like the old man, toiling for their entire life.
The painting itself is huge: 5' 5" x 7' 10". This provides a nearly life size view of the old man and the boy, giving the impression of stumbling across them in the road. One might pity for the workers, as it is apparent that they are performing strenuous and seemingly endless work. Despite this, they do not appear to be asking for pity, rather, they continue their honest labor.
Up until this point, paintings of such a large scale had been reserved for history paintings. As a realist, Courbet challenged these history paintings, and therefore chose to make this painting just as large. By doing so, he portrayed the struggles of ordinary people as being just as important as those events and themes in history. When "The Stone Breakers" and other paintings like it were shown in Paris salons, many people saw them as anarchist political threats, urging the rise of the proletariat.
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