Workers
This painting was created as one of a series of four paintings to decorate the house Bernheim-Jeune, a Paris art dealer. Although his works are characterized by bright colors and a luminescent quality, few of his works were meant as pure decoration, like Workers. The paintings in the series were meant to depict scenes from four different regions of France, and present symbolic messages of culture and nature. This painting was created to represent the city and contemporary life. It illustrates a bridge in Neuilly, on the Seine River downstream from Paris, which was heavily developed in the 19th century, and which Bonnard considered an example of contemporary urban life.
Howard Pyle
1909
