Le Fondeur (The Foundry) 1900

Eugene Carriere created ‘Le Fondeur’ – ‘The Foundry’ – using lithography, a printmaking process, during the late 19th century in France. It depicts a foundry worker in a moment of intense labor, an industrial scene rendered with an almost mystical quality. Carriere’s choice of subject reflects the social and economic transformations of the time. The rise of industry and the changing status of the working class became increasingly visible, and he addresses these major societal shifts directly. The almost monochromatic palette and the use of light and shadow gives the lithograph an ethereal, dream-like quality that speaks to the Symbolist movement. To fully understand Carriere’s motivations, we can look at his artistic and political beliefs, and to the broader social and cultural contexts of the Third Republic. We might examine how the worker is represented and consider what this tells us about class, labor, and the politics of representation. Art history provides tools to decode these visual cues, but ultimately, the meaning we find is deeply tied to the historical moment in which it was created.