Workmen on the Street

Workmen on the Street belongs to Daumier's observation of working-class labor in the Parisian public environment — the figure of the worker, tool in hand, moving through or occupying the street in the performance of essential but economically invisible labor. By the time Daumier painted this subject he had spent decades observing Parisian street life, and his working-class figures carry the weight of that accumulated knowledge: they are neither idealized nor caricatured, but observed with the direct attention he brought to all human subjects regardless of class. The street worker as a subject positions labor in the public realm — unlike the factory hand who is hidden in industrial space, the street worker is visible to all passersby and is yet invisible in the sense that his work is taken for granted. Daumier's democratic sympathies found expression in the dignity he attributed to working figures without sentimentalizing their condition.

The working figure in the street environment creates a composition structured around a single body in action or transit. Daumier builds the worker through broad tonal forms that convey physical mass and the weight of labor, using the surrounding street environment to establish context without.