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DailyArt Magazine Celebrates International Workers' Day with Obsolete Art Jobs

other · 2026-05-01

DailyArt Magazine published an article on International Workers' Day celebrating obsolete professions depicted in art. The piece highlights five historical jobs: millinery (hat-making), gleaning (collecting leftover crops), parquet planing (floor scraping), laundering (washing clothes by hand), and stone breaking. Each job is illustrated by a famous painting: Edgar Degas's 'The Millinery Shop' (1884), Jean-François Millet's 'The Gleaners' (1857), Gustave Caillebotte's 'The Parquet Planers' (1876), Eugène Boudin's 'Laundresses on the Banks of Touques' (1894), and Georges Seurat's 'Stone Breaker and Wheelbarrow, Le Raincy' (1883). The article notes that millinery, once common, is now rare; gleaning was a legal right for the poor in England and France; parquet planing used manual scraping before machines; laundering was hard physical work often done in rivers; and stone breaking remains labor-intensive despite modern machinery. The piece quotes Rainer Maria Rilke: 'To work is to live without dying.'

Key facts

  • Article published on International Workers' Day.
  • Features five obsolete jobs: millinery, gleaning, parquet planing, laundering, stone breaking.
  • Each job is illustrated by a painting from the 19th century.
  • Edgar Degas's 'The Millinery Shop' (1884) is at the Art Institute of Chicago.
  • Jean-François Millet's 'The Gleaners' (1857) is at the Musée d'Orsay.
  • Gustave Caillebotte's 'The Parquet Planers' (1876) is in a private collection.
  • Eugène Boudin's 'Laundresses on the Banks of Touques' (1894) is in a private collection.
  • Georges Seurat's 'Stone Breaker and Wheelbarrow, Le Raincy' (1883) is at the Philips Collection.
  • Gleaning was a legally enforced entitlement for the poor in England and France.
  • Article quotes Rainer Maria Rilke: 'To work is to live without dying.'

Entities

Artists

  • Edgar Degas
  • Jean-François Millet
  • Gustave Caillebotte
  • Eugène Boudin
  • Georges Seurat
  • Rainer Maria Rilke

Institutions

  • DailyArt Magazine
  • Art Institute of Chicago
  • Musée d'Orsay
  • Philips Collection
  • The Atlantic

Locations

  • Chicago
  • IL
  • USA
  • Paris
  • France
  • Washington
  • DC
  • Le Raincy
  • Milan
  • Italy
  • England
  • Europe

Sources