ABSTRACT
Upon receiving Lecoeur's commission, Fougeron moved with his family to Lens, a mining town in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, where he installed his easel in the dining room of a house owned by the mining federation. Given a salary which allowed him to live 'honestly', even 'comfortably', Fougeron's task was to descend into the quotidian existence of the mining community in order to 'set life and its meaning on canvas'.3 Claiming the people as his patron, the artist remained in Lens until 1 May (according to his report in Ce Soir, Fougeron stopped working on France's 'Fete du travail'), where he frequented workers' meetings, drove around the countryside in the car loaned to him by the federation, and recorded in sketches and studies the mine workers and their surroundings.4
