Following in the footsteps of Renato Guttuso and Fernand Léger, de Francia found from his very earliest career a natural subject in the sight of workers at work. Whether captured scaling ladders or scaffolding, or resting for a picnic in the quarry near his summer home in Lacoste, or lounging around the docks chatting and smoking, these figures are always presented with an empathy and sensitivity that manages entirely to avoid Romanticism, as though mounting an objective case for the dignity of life.
