Kollwitz similarly used charcoal and drawing media to capture the physical strain and dignity of working class laborers, employing bold simplified forms that communicate raw human effort and social empathy with comparable emotional directness.

Meunier dedicated his career to depicting industrial and manual laborers with heroic gravitas, often rendering workers from rear or profile views that emphasize muscular physicality and the weight of toil in a similarly modern realist tradition.

Millet produced numerous charcoal studies of peasants and laborers at work, focusing on simplified monumental forms seen from behind or in profile to convey the rhythm and burden of physical labor with a quiet but powerful expressiveness.