Urban Revolutionaries: 2 Living in the city

For those who had arrived from the country, towns and cities were alien places. This article shows a selection of paintings of the ordinary parts where the common people lived and worked.

The city of Paris was substantially redeveloped by Georges-Eugène Haussmann during the middle of the nineteenth century, but his wide boulevards only displaced common people into cramped slums in other areas. Montmartre, for instance, wasn’t incorporated into the city until 1860, and in 1871 was the source of the uprising that became the Paris Commune.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Rue Tholozé (Montmartre in the Rain) (1897), oil on paper on wood, 70 x 95 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Athenaeum.

Pierre Bonnard’s Rue Tholozé or Montmartre in the Rain (1897) shows one of the streets at the heart of Montmartre, not far from the famous Sacré-Coeur. Seen from the third or fourth floor, it’s a grey and wet evening in which the lights of the windows provide a pervasive warm glow.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Narrow Street in Paris (c 1897), oil on cardboard on wood, 37.1 x 19.6 cm, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. The Athenaeum.

Bonnard’s Narrow Street in Paris (c 1897) is an aerial view of a bustling backstreet.

George Bellows (1882–1925), Cliff Dwellers (1913), oil on canvas, 102.1 × 106.8 cm, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Wikimedia Commons.

George Bellows’ famous Cliff Dwellers (1913) shows the largely immigrant population of tenements in Lower East Side of New York City. Washing was hung out to dry on ropes strung between their wooden balconies.

Colin Campbell Cooper (1856–1937), Columbus Circle (1909), oil on canvas, 66 × 91.4 cm, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA. Wikimedia Commons.

Colin Campbell Cooper’s Columbus Circle from 1909 shows the interaction of jumbled buildings, light, smoke, and steam. With Gaetano Russo’s landmark statue of Christopher Columbus just to the right of centre, the circle had only been completed in 1905, as part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision for Central Park, off to the right. In the foreground, Cooper shows some of the more intimate sights of this new elevated world, with a woman hanging out her washing amid the chimneys.

Many cities grew around heavy industries, such as Charleroi in the Black Country of Belgium.

Maximilien Luce (1858–1941), The Slag-Heaps of Sacré Madame (1897), oil on canvas, 67 x 94 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Maximilien Luce’s Slag-Heaps of Sacré Madame from 1897 is perhaps a unique view of this city. Slag heaps or spoil tips were an inevitable sight in coal-mining country. They’re formed from the spoil or waste removed from underground, and don’t contain slag, the by-products of metal smelting. Mining spoil is frequently toxic, and can result in disastrous landslides.

Few cities enjoyed the cleaner air that most do today. In London, in particular, ‘smogs’ composed of a toxic mixture of smoke and fog caused the deaths of many thousands each winter. It wasn’t until well into the twentieth century that any effort was made to reduce smoke emissions from industry and domestic heating.

Frits Thaulow (1847–1906), The Smoke (1898), media and dimensions not known, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Frits Thaulow’s The Smoke from 1898 shows a suburb overwhelmed by smoke, with houses crammed up against factory walls. Few cities enforced any separation between industrial areas and housing, and there were no restrictions on the discharge of smoke even in densely populated zones.

Alfred Philippe Roll (1846–1919), A Large Town of Smoke (date not known), oil on canvas, 68.5 x 83.5 cm, Museu Antônio Parreiras, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wikimedia Commons.

Alfred Roll’s undated sketch of A Large Town of Smoke probably dates from the same period.

Maximilien Luce (1858–1941), Industrial City (1899), oil on masonite, dimensions not known, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawai’i. Wikimedia Commons.

Whereas the French Impressionists gave small glimpses of smoke billowing from the chimneys of factories sprawling out around Paris, Maximilien Luce painted Industrial City in 1899, again probably around Charleroi.

Eugen Bracht (1842–1921), Hoesch Steelworks from the North (1905), oil on canvas, 70 x 86 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The largest employer in the German city of Dortmund was its steelworks, founded in 1871. In 1905, Eugen Bracht painted this Impressionist view of the Hoesch Steelworks from the North, with its tall chimneys and their plumes of acrid smoke.

Eugen Bracht (1842–1921), Hoesch Iron and Steel Plant, Dortmund (1907), oil on canvas, 137 x 136 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Two years later, Bracht returned to paint the Hoesch Iron and Steel Plant, Dortmund (1907).

Constantin Meunier (1831–1905), Black Country – Borinage (date not known), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Meunier Museum, Brussels, Belgium. Image by Szilas, via Wikimedia Commons.

Constantin Meunier painted in the Borinage, another mining area to the west of Charleroi in Belgium. His undated Black Country – Borinage shows the area where Vincent van Gogh lived between 1878-80, then one of the major coal mining areas in Europe. The tower at the left is the pit head, where trucks of freshly cut coal were brought to the surface.

Constantin Meunier (1831–1905), Coron, Women having a Chat (date not known), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Meunier Museum, Brussels, Belgium. Image by Szilas, via Wikimedia Commons.

Meunier’s Coron, Women having a Chat gives insight into the close communities in these areas, and shows the main drain running down the middle of the street. Coron refers to the local housing of the working class in northern France and Belgium, the equivalent of Britain’s back-to-back miners’ cottages.

Maximilien Luce (1858–1941), The Pile Drivers (1902-3), oil on canvas, 153 x 195 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

The Pile Drivers (1902-3) is one of Luce’s explorations of the working life of the common man in Paris. Construction work in the French capital continued to be active well into the early twentieth century, and Luce painted its many facets. The factories on the opposite bank have infiltrated surrounding residential and commercial districts, only to fill the air with plumes of smoke.