Artwork Information

This oil sketch of two men wielding pickaxes is a preliminary study for one of four paintings in a set of monumental murals commissioned by the French government for the General Assembly Hall of the Conseil d'État in the Palais Royal, Paris. The overall project celebrates ‘working France’. The two figures form part of the foreground of Industrial Labour (Civil Engineering,) which shows a construction crew building the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The other murals are allegories on the themes of Agriculture/Harvest (showing farmers working in a field), Commerce (showing fishermen on the docks of the Old Port of Marseille), and Intellectual Work (a man reading a book as he walks through a pine grove). Martin painted the series in a late neo-impressionist style, between 1914 and 1926.