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The Fourth Estate
Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo · Post-Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism
- Artist
- Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868–1907)
- Date
- 1898–1901
- Dimensions
- 293 x 545 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy
The Fourth Estate shows a crowd of farm labourers advancing towards the viewer in a calm, determined march under a bright sun, led by three figures: two men and a woman carrying a baby.
A closer look
The 'fourth estate', after the clergy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, is the working class, whose time has come. The marchers walk out of a dark background into the light, filling the width of the huge canvas like an unstoppable wave. Their faces are serious, dignified, without violence. Pellizza used the divisionist technique, building colour from small separate strokes, to make the sunlight vibrate. He worked on the subject for ten years, refining it through several versions. It became an icon of the Italian labour movement and of the 20th century.