The Stone Breakers

The Stone Breakers

Destroyed during World War II
Artist Gustave Courbet
Year 1850
Type Oil on canvas
Dimensions 165 cm × 257 cm (65 in × 101 in)

The Stone Breakers (French: Les Casseurs de pierres) was an 1849–50 painting by the French painter Gustave Courbet.[1][2] It was a work of social realism, depicting two peasants, a young man and an old man, breaking rocks.

The painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850. It was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945.[2]

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