The Stone Breaker by Georges Seurat

Here, the figures of the laborers are overshadowed by the big dark areas of standing and upended carts silhouetted against the sky: the men are digging busily.

This is one of many panels dating from the years in which Seurat still seems to be groping, still laboring under three influences of Millet, apparent in some figures of stooping peasant women; that of Gustave Courbet, which we shall see in The Stone Breaker; and that of Van Gogh, most apparent here in the jaggedness of the composition.