The Floor Planers

Three workers kneel on a bare wooden floor, scraping it smooth in a quiet, sunlit Parisian apartment. Painted by Gustave Caillebotte in 1875, this scene shows something rarely chosen as a subject back then: ordinary laborers doing hard, unglamorous work. Caillebotte gives careful attention to their bent backs, the curls of wood shavings, and the warm light streaming through the wrought iron balcony. There is a bottle of wine resting on the floor too, a small human touch in an otherwise focused moment.

When Caillebotte submitted this painting to the official Paris Salon, it was rejected. Critics found the subject too crude, too real, and not the sort of thing fine art was supposed to show. So he turned to the Impressionists instead, exhibiting it with them in 1876. Though his style here is more polished and precise than the loose brushwork of friends like Monet or Renoir, his eye for everyday life fit right in. Today the work is seen as one of the earliest paintings to treat the urban working class with such honesty and dignity.