Tags: Artwork.
The Stonebreaker is an 1857 oil-on-canvas painting by Henry Wallis. It depicts a manual labourer who appears to be asleep worn out by his work but has actually been worked to death.The painting was first exhibited in 1858 at the Royal Academy in London and was highly acclaimed. Many viewers assumed the man was sleeping worn out by his day of hard but honest labour. Wallis gave no outright statement that the man depicted was dead but there are many suggestions to this effect.
