#workers

The original doesn't exist anymore — it was destroyed when Dresden was bombed near the end of the Second World War, so from what I can find, reproductions like this are all that's left of it. Apparently it caused a stir at the time too: painting road workers at the kind of size usually saved for kings and battles wasn't the done thing.

It's said that he photographed sites like this and then rebuilt the scene back in the studio, so what looks grabbed in a single moment was actually pieced together afterward. He ran in the same circles as Van Gogh and, from what I've read, wanted to paint ordinary working people rather than grand subjects.