Happy New Year 1893

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen created this drawing, "Happy New Year," using black crayon. The central figure, a worker with a shovel, gazes towards a horizon where a rising sun or moon looms over factories. Consider the shovel. It is not merely a tool; it’s a symbol of labor. It echoes images of agricultural work that are deeply embedded in our collective memory, from Roman depictions of ploughing the earth to Millet’s "The Sower". But here, the earth is replaced by industrial terrain. The shovel points to a transformation, where man’s labor has shifted from the fields to factories. The ambiguity of the rising orb is striking. Is it a hopeful sunrise or a baleful moon overlooking the landscape? This duality reflects the ambivalent emotions tied to industrial progress: hope for the future juxtaposed with anxieties about alienation and loss of the natural world. Steinlen captures a psycho-historical moment, where optimism and trepidation intertwine. Like a Janus figure, this image looks both forward and back, embodying the complex feelings of a society on the brink of a new era.