Showtime

What: Blood, Sweat and Tears: Labour in Art

Where: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King St. W.

When: Until Jan. 4

Phone: 905-527-6610

Aristocrats, priests and soldiers are the idlers of society, said Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. The productive members, he said, included workers, farmers, scholars and artists.

Born more than 250 years ago, Saint-Simon helped to lay the foundations for the social revolution of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Artists joined the revolution by depicting positive images of working people.

Blood, Sweat and Tears: Labour in Art, a wonderful exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, explores the theme of urban and rural work in more than 100 paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs produced between 1850 and 1950 in Europe and North America.

The depiction of people at work has a long tradition. Farmers and shepherds inhabited idyllic landscapes more than 2,000 years ago. In the 16th and 17th centuries, peasants were often portrayed as figures of fun.

But by 1850, artists began to create heroic types of working people, ennobled by their labour and suffering. Some of these paintings were comforting pictures of rural life for city folk. But others emphasized horrific working and living conditions, encouraging viewers to become social activists on behalf of the poor.

Fights for workers' rights, inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and others, led to paintings of labour unrest. In The Strike (1906), Erik Ludwig Henningsen, shows workers and police outside a factory on a winter's day. The subject is relatively new in art.

Henningsen, a Danish painter, wants us to get involved in the action. The spacious foreground on the left and footprints in the snow invite us into the scene.

We meet three workers in the right foreground. The middle one raises a fist leftward.

This gesture directs us farther into the painting. It's balanced by another clenched fist belonging to a man on the left. He, too, is part of a group of three.

Such a balancing act, however minor, suggests Henningsen is creating what well-bred viewers would recognize as a proper painting. And a proper painting makes it easier for viewers to sympathize with the subject. What's more, our point of view puts us among the strikers.

Between the shaken fists is the object of the men's anger -- a procession led by a man smoking a pipe. Flanked by two policemen and followed by other men, he seems to be swaggering.

Presumably, these are employees who have not joined the strike, exiting the factory gate with police protection. The low sun hits the sides of their heads, creating a fiery glow.

Henningsen humanizes the event by adding two children on the far right. They serve as reminders of the workers' families, suggesting the strike is not a selfish one. But children also represent the future, and the purpose of this and similar strikes is to build a better world.

Henningsen sets his scene in the winter. This may be a specific strike, but it doesn't have to be. A winter world clearly identifies a northern country.

Inspired by a growing nationalism in the north, Henningsen might be hinting northern countries are leading the way in social reforms.

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.

dhaggo@thespec.com