Artist: Gustave Caillebotte
Year: 1875
Medium: Oil on canvas
Les raboteurs de parquet (English title: The Floor Scrapers) is an oil painting by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. The canvas measures 102 by 146.5 centimetres (40.2 in × 57.7 in). It was originally given by Caillebotte's family in 1894 to the Musée du Luxembourg, then transferred to the Musée du Louvre in 1929. In 1947, it was moved to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, and in 1986, it was transferred again to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it is currently displayed.
(...) Despite the effort Caillebotte put into the painting, it was rejected by France's most prestigious art exhibition, the Salon, for the Salon of 1875. The depiction of working-class people in their trade, not fully clothed, shocked the jurors and was deemed a "vulgar subject matter". He was hurt by this rejection, and instead showed it at the second exhibition of the Impressionists, with whom he had already associated himself, in 1876. He presented it alongside some of his other works, including a second, different version of Raboteurs from 1876, and his earlier work Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (Young Man at His Window). The images of the floor scrapers came to be associated with Degas's paintings of washerwomen, also presented at the same exhibition and similarly scorned as "vulgar".
Why are they scraping the floor? Was this just part of the process of installing a wood floor back in the day? Is this what they did instead of waxing them? Lovely painting, but I’m super curious about what exactly they’re doing and why.
Sandpaper didn't exist back in the day, they used metal sheets and created a burl that they'd use to scrape the wood to make it smooth and/or remove layers.
They scraped off the old oil and dirt and then renewed the oil.
All of that peeled off is dirty oil?! Eww.
No, it's also wood. Those types of scrapers will also shave a paper thin layer of wood along with the junk.
These days they sand it, and then you're breathing wood and wax varnish dust.
Smells so nice though, too bad it's cancerous