Egg-sellers, 1st plate (Les marchandes d'oeufs) 

Alphonse Legros made this etching called “Egg-sellers, 1st plate” in the late 19th century. It shows two women sitting next to each other with a basket of eggs in front of them. Legros lived most of his life in England, but he was born in France, and you can see in his work a deep interest in the life of working people. In France at this time, the art world was dominated by the Academy, which promoted historical and allegorical paintings, so Legros and other artists like Courbet and Millet were consciously turning their backs on official art and focusing on the everyday lives of ordinary people. To understand the image, we can ask: what was the role of women at this time? What were the economic opportunities available to them? How are these women being represented? Are they ennobled, degraded, or something else? These are the kinds of questions that art historians ask when we seek to understand artworks as products of social conditions.