The Iron Foundry 1899

Maximilien Luce created this painting, The Iron Foundry, using oil paints and canvas. These were, by the late 19th century, fairly conventional materials for making art. However, Luce here used them to depict a decidedly unconventional subject. Rather than a landscape or portrait, we see men engaged in the intensely physical labor of industrial production. Note how Luce's characteristic pointillist technique - small dots of pure color - is attuned to the extreme conditions of the foundry. The heat, the smoke, the sheer effort involved in the work. All of this is conveyed through the activated surface of the painting. The material result, iron, would be used to build railways and bridges, and to make yet more machines. It is not too much to say that this is an image of capitalism itself, hard at work. This is not simply a painting, it is a document of social reality, and an argument for recognizing the value of labor.