The Floor Scrapers
1875 · Oil on canvas · Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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About this work
- Artist
- Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)
- Year
- 1875
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 102 × 146.5 cm
- Collection
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Movement
- Impressionism
Three workmen, stripped to the waist, kneel on the floor of a Paris apartment planing the parquet, the curled shavings around them and light from the window picking out their arms and backs. Caillebotte painted it in 1875 at the age of twenty-six, and it is one of the first serious pictures of the urban working class. He had trained in the academic studio of Bonnat, and it shows: the steep perspective, the aligned floorboards and the figures drawn one by one before being transferred to the canvas. But the subject was new, and the Salon jury of 1875 rejected it as vulgar. Caillebotte then joined the Impressionists and showed it at their second exhibition in 1876, where its cool, documentary realism struck critics as a great modern picture. His family gave it to the state in 1894, and it is now in the Musée d'Orsay.
This full-bleed edition prints the work edge to edge from a high-resolution scan of the original, very slightly cropped (a few percent at most) to fit the sheet. The gallery edition shows the whole work, uncropped. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Three workmen planing a parquet floor in cool window light, for a study, office or hallway with wooden floors at 24×16 or 36×24. Black or natural wood frame on a white or warm grey wall; it suits spare, modern rooms with timber.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Impressionism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1875)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Mood
- classic
- Rooms
- hallway or entryway, study or library, home office, living room, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 24×16. Prints at 18×12, 24×16, 36×24 in — 18×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×16 above a console or sideboard; 36×24 as the statement piece above a sofa or headboard.
Framing. Printed edge to edge: a slim black or natural wood frame right to the image, or let the canvas wrap do the framing. Also available gallery-wrapped on canvas, ready to hang with no frame.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Floor Scrapers (Les Raboteurs de parquet) in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Floor Scrapers (Les Raboteurs de parquet) painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
