The Stonebreakers by Gustave Courbet - 1849 - 165 × 257 cm destroyed The Stonebreakers by Gustave Courbet - 1849 - 165 × 257 cm destroyed

The Stonebreakers

oil on canvas • 165 × 257 cm
  • Gustave Courbet - June 10, 1819 - December 31, 1877 Gustave Courbet 1849

The Stonebreakers was first groundbreaking painting in Courbet's career (get it? groundbreaking?) Painted in 1849, it shows two unidentified men who are simple workers. One is too young and the other is too old for hard labor. Because of such paintings, Courbet may have inaugurated a radical change in nineteenth-century French art through his Realist movement. Unfortunately, the painting was destroyed during World War II. Along with 154 other paintings, The Stonebreakers was destroyed with a transport vehicle moving the paintings to a castle near Dresden was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945.