Quay with men unloading sand barges

Van Gogh's Quay with Men Unloading Sand Barges, painted at Arles in 1888 and now at Museum Folkwang in Essen, depicts workers on the Rhône quays unloading the sand barges that supplied the construction industry. Industrial subjects of working men engaged in repetitive manual labor were for Van Gogh a continuation of the social-realist tradition of Millet and the Nuenen peasant paintings — labor as the condition of honest existence. The Folkwang Museum's holding places this among the significant German institutional holdings of Van Gogh's Arles period.

The figures of the workers are rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic attention to the physical reality of labor — bent bodies, purposeful movement, the specific postures of unloading. The quay environment is observed with accuracy: the barges, the sand, the water of the Rhône. His warm Arles palette renders the industrial scene with unexpected color richness.