Who painted 'The Floor Scrapers' (Les Raboteurs de parquet)?

Gustave Caillebotte painted *The Floor Scrapers* (*Les Raboteurs de parquet*).

Caillebotte completed the oil painting in 1875. It depicts three workers kneeling and scraping a wooden floor in a bourgeois Paris apartment, probably the artist’s studio at 77 rue de Miromesnil. Their bare torsos, bent bodies, tools, and curling wood shavings turn ordinary manual labor into the central subject of a large, carefully composed modern painting.

The Paris Salon rejected the work in 1875, reportedly considering its depiction of working people and partially undressed bodies too vulgar. Caillebotte instead showed it at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, where he presented eight paintings. The work combines precise drawing and modeling associated with academic art with bold perspective, vivid light, and an unconventional urban subject.

Caillebotte is sometimes remembered mainly as a wealthy patron of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and other artists. That role is important, but *The Floor Scrapers* demonstrates his own distinctive contribution. Its high viewpoint and cropped composition have often been linked to his interest in photography, while its focus on urban labor helped broaden the subjects considered suitable for serious modern painting.