The Floor Scrapers  |  Gustave Caillebotte, 1875

The Floor Scrapers is a masterwork by the French Impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte. It hangs in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. This beautiful, monochromatic work of light and detail rests on the backs of the essential workers of the day. Try to imagine first, the force needed to scrape layers of stain and wax from a wooden floor. Then, try to imagine the number of wooden floors in the city of Paris in 1875.

This painting memorializes the drudgery of this job and the toll it takes on knees, arms, shoulders, backs. These lithe men would eventually be replaced by machines but probably not before they had lost their strength and mobility to never ending varnish. And machines brought new and equally difficult hardships to these men at the bottom of the economy.

This is another work of social realism, a public viewing of a punishing, foundational job in French society done for the aesthetics and convenience of others not shown. When I think of the people who scrape in our times, those in the meat and poultry packing industry come to mind first. I think of all the people grateful for jobs “scraping” beef and chicken on fast-paced lines in crowded spaces where the air is thick, damp and rank. I think of the illnesses brought onto the floors of these industries because in these workers’ lives desperation and paychecks must always trump self-concern and missed hours. They seldom have job security. They seldom have health insurance. They may not have legal status. So they scrape and scrape and just scrape by wondering how their lives could ever matter.

And where is our place in this injustice? Maybe what we can do is join them in wondering with compassion and hope as we firmly stand and work for their mattering. Maybe that is the call of this art and of the gospel of our Lord. 

We pray for all who do jobs we would not do. We pray for their health, safety, and security. We pray for your justice, God, rolling down like waters for them.

In hope and faith,

Sandy Prouty