Talk:The Stone Breakers

The Stone Breakers has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: June 30, 2023. (Reviewed version).

A fact from The Stone Breakers appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 23 June 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the 1849 painting The Stone Breakers (pictured), by French artist Gustave Courbet, was destroyed in 1945 during a bombing raid by the Allies of World War II?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Stone Breakers.

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Comments

There should be an explanation for where the illustration on this page came from. 115.64.142.162 (talk) 06:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by BorgQueen (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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The Stone Breakers

... that the 1849 painting, The Stone Breakers (pictured) by French artist Gustave Courbet, was destroyed in 1945 by the Allies of World War II? Source: From February 13 to February 15, 1945 the Allies of World War II continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks. The Stone Breakers was destroyed during World War II, along with a total of 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the Königstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Caroline Breese Hall

5x expanded by Bruxton (talk). Self-nominated at 22:31, 9 June 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/The Stone Breakers; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Overall, hook and article meet the criteria and the image used is free and clear. I made a slight edit in boldening the name of the article in the hook, but otherwise, should be good to go. JJonahJackalope (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Location of the second version, and some sketches

Somewhat coyly, the article mentions there are two versions, but fails to mention that the second version (right) is in the Reinhart Collection at "Am Römerholz" in Winterthur. Somewhat less finished, and reversed, it may be later in date - most sources say "c.1849" - see for example [1] - but I suppose it could be an earlier oil sketch.

There is also an oil sketch of the main figure (right) which I understand there is in a private collection. And a pencil sketch of the other figure, in the Ashmolean. See [2] Theramin (talk) 23:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Theramin: Thank you so much for the research. I could not find information about it. Can you add to the article? Bruxton (talk) 23:45, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. The sources I've located so far are not great, but this seems definitive: [3] And there is some discussion in our articles in other languages. Perhaps you can work that in somehow? Theramin (talk) 23:48, 10 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well done. By the way, the NGA image is a "Gillotype" print after Courbet, which is why it has a big signature (left) "G. Courbet" and if you look carefully a tiny signature (lower right) "GILLOT SC". That is, Firmin Gillot sculpsit, i.e. made the printing plate, which appears to be based very closely on Courbet's original pencil drawing in the Ashmolean. I think the "Gillotype" is some sort of zincography (there were many technical developments in printmaking and reproduction of images in the 19th century, some advanced by the Gillot family). Theramin (talk) 23:39, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just so my comments at the end of the GA review don't get lost now the transcluded review has disappeared from this page, I've copied them here (below). It would be nice to get some of the detail from the source mentioned below into the article, if only so we can put a name to Monsieur Gagey. Theramin (talk) 23:39, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If we are in the mood to add more sources - neither of the above two mention the Winterthur version, by the way - I'd suggest Claudette Mainzer's 1982 PhD thesis from Ohio State University (here) which includes a lot of additional detail and connection to the two other Franche-Comté works exhibited at the 1850 Salon, his Burial at Ornans and Peasants of Flagey (right), including the name of the older stonebreaker (Claude-François Gagey : his wife Mme Gagey is in the crowd in the Burial), the reason why he was mending the road (labour in lieu of paying taxes - derived from the old corvée royale [fr], mandatory annual labour to maintain the roads), quotes from relevant letters, early exhibition of the completed works in Ornans, Besançon, and Dijon before the Salon, the reason for the reversal of the composition from the preparatory study now in Winterthur, and a lot more. The result would be a much stronger article, arguably better than "good". Theramin (talk) 22:37, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Size in comparison to Burial at Ornans

I don't see the size comparison or letter as described in the article in the book cited as reference for this fact (Jessica Gunderson, Realism, 2008). Burial at Ornans is very much larger than the Stone Breakers--Burial at Ornans is 3.5m x 6.6m (source: wiki page on Burial at Ornans) whereas the Stone Breakers was 1.5 x 2.6 meters. I'm not sure where the reference to the letter is actually from, or why it would state that the two were similar in size. Lapidary6 (talk) 12:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]