If country folk were to be drawn into towns and cities, those urban areas had to provide paid work. During the early decades of the industrial revolution those jobs were often in mills and factories near the source of their raw materials or power. Towns grew rapidly across the coalfields of northern Europe as mines were sunk to extract the coal, and again where iron ore was readily available. As canals and railways enabled supplies to be moved further and faster, towns and cities flourished as centres of manufacturing.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, large scale iron production had already started in North America. In 1857, investors opened a site for the production of iron primarily for the growing railways across Canada, and a few years later William Armstrong painted those Toronto Rolling Mills (1864). By this time, it was the largest iron mill in Canada, and the largest manufacturing industry in the city, but it was soon surpassed by steel mills and shut down in 1873.

John Ferguson Weir took his dark realism before an unusual motif for American painting at that time, the hot, harsh, and dangerous world of the West Point Iron and Cannon Factory, in The Gun Foundry (1866). The moment shown here is the casting of a Parrott Gun, in the foundry responsible for making most of the large guns used by the Union forces during the Civil War. This was located to the north of New York City, where there was a rich supply of timber, local iron ore, and water power.

Weir’s Forging the Shaft is a replica painted in 1874-7, after the original of 1868 was destroyed by fire. It shows the same foundry, this time working the massive propellor shaft for an ocean liner, more a symbol of peace and trade than past conflict.

Adolph von Menzel’s The Iron Rolling Mill from 1875 gives a good impression of the crowded, sweaty, and dangerous environment in which iron and steel workers spent, and sometimes lost, their lives.

Production of steel on an industrial scale started after 1857, with the introduction of the Bessemer Process. Constantin Meunier’s undated Steel Foundry must therefore have been painted during the 1860s or later.

The dangers of iron and steel work are obvious today, and claimed many casualties at the time. Few employers had any concern for the safety of those who worked in these conditions, as there was a steady supply of young and able men to keep production rolling and profits accruing.

Not all industries were heavy, hot or sweaty. Charles Frederic Ulrich painted a young apprentice drinking during a moment’s pause in his work in The Village Printing Shop, Haarlem (1884).

Christian Ludwig Bokelmann’s oil sketch of a Lead Mine in Selbeck (1888) has a more subtle social message for an ancient industry that had long recognised the toxicity of the lead it worked with, but continued to employ children.

The Naturalist artist Jean-Eugène Buland tackled more complex issues in his Un Patron, or The Apprentice’s Lesson (1888). After France’s ignominious defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, efforts were made to make France more industrial and more modern. Here a young boy is being trained by the foreman to make a cogwheel, when many would have preferred him still to be at school.

Painting men and women at work was by no means confined to Naturalists, with their attention to fine detail. Alessandro Milesi’s undated The Spinners is a much looser oil sketch that could qualify as being an Impression. This shows one of the lighter industries that employed predominantly women.

Maximilien Luce painted many works showing people at work, as his style moved on from Neo-Impressionism to Post-Impressionism during the 1890s. His Charleroi Foundry, Casting (1896) shows this well, and is one of a long series he painted showing those working in heavy industry in this city in the mining area of Belgium.

With the decline of Naturalism in the early twentieth century, the emphasis on workers weakened, and artists like Hans Baluschek returned to painting heavy plant and processes in his Steel Rolling Mill (1910).

Finally, Robert Sterl’s Ironworkers of 1919 is an oil sketch showing workers at one of the Krupp plants in Germany. Their only protective clothing is a heavy leather apron.

For those used to agricultural work, factories were relentlessly demanding. Workloads didn’t change with season, and each year passed without the celebration of harvest home. Few employers had easier work available that might offer those recovering from illness or injury a little respite, and as age took its toll on their bodies the only alternative was unemployment.

In this second article looking at examples of the use of posters in paintings, and how their contents can be relevant, I move on to the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century. By this time large-format colour printing was churning out unprecedented numbers of posters that were being stuck onto walls in public places. These promoted events and products, and the advertising industry was starting to flourish. Posters included in paintings had largely been associated with poverty.

In France, Naturalists like Jean-Eugène Buland took on challenging motifs with challenging readings. In Alms of a Beggar (1880), a young woman dressed immaculately in white is sat outside a church seeking charity. Approaching her, a coin in his right hand, is a man who can only be a beggar himself. His clothes are patched on patches, faded and filthy, and he wears battered old wooden shoes. Yet he is about to give the young woman what is probably his last coin. Buland uses two small posters as decorations, one pinned to the white tablecloth at the left, the other attached to the wooden door at the right.

Those artists like Jean Béraud who were recording street scenes of Paris in the Belle Époque often featured posters.

Béraud’s view of A Windy Day on the Pont des Arts from 1880-1 contains several fascinating details, such as the man carrying his fishing rod among the stream of top-hatted gentlemen. Posters at the right advertise the Fête de Sèvres, held annually in that town each June, but this clearly isn’t a pleasant summer’s day.

Working from his customised studio carriage, Béraud developed a particular affection for the street kiosks that had sprung up on so many corners, and were covered with posters. Parisian Street Scene, claimed to date from about 1885, is one example, on the Boulevard des Italiens from the corner of the Rue Laffitte.

Béraud’s Carriages on the Boulevard des Italiens shows the same kiosk in the golden light of a winter’s afternoon. However, this view is purported to have been painted in 1890, five years after the Parisian Street Scene above. It isn’t credible that the posters illuminated in the kiosk have remained identical over that period.

Just as in London a few years before, posters continue to feature in the background of paintings of those living on the streets. Fernand Pelez’ Homeless from 1883 was exhibited at the Salon in Paris that year, where those viewing it only needed to walk round the corner from the Palais des Champs-Élysées (where it was held) to see scenes like this for real. Posters again refer ironically to festivals, and deliver information about traffic management in Paris.

Jean-François Raffaëlli’s Guests Waiting for the Wedding, from before 1884, are stood outside a wedding room that has, like them, seen better days. Behind them are official notices concerning dogs, an appeal for military reservists, and other local matters.

Évariste Carpentier’s The Foreigners from 1887 shows the arrival of outsiders in a close-knit community. At the right, sat at a table under the window, a mother and daughter dressed in black indicating recent bereavement are the foreigners looking for hospitality. Instead, everyone in the room, and many of those in the crowded bar behind, stares at them as if they have just arrived from Mars. At the left edge are two posters apparently promoting local events, to which these foreigners presumably aren’t invited.

By the early twentieth century posters had grown into large hoardings shown in Paul Hoeniger’s view of Berlin’s Spittelmarkt from 1912. With the advent of motor vehicles came the visual excesses of the advertising industry that still wants to own everything we see today.