The painting was exhibited at the 1850 Paris Salon where it was criticized by for its depiction of a subject that was not considered proper for high art.

Conversely, social theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon praised the work and saw it as a successful socialist painting.

[3] He began work on The Stone Breakers painting in November 1849 after seeing two laborers breaking rocks along the road.

[8] Before World War II the one version of the painting was housed at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.

"[11] During World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the Allies continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany.

The Stone Breakers was destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the Königstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.

The figures in the painting perform repetitive menial labor and they demonstrate the injustice of peasant life.

Courbet described the painting by saying:[1]On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over his work, his sledgehammer raised, his skin parched by the sun, his head shaded by a straw hat; his trousers of coarse material, are completely patched; and in his cracked sabots you can see his bare heels sticking out of socks that were once blue.

On the other side is a young man with swarthy skin, his head covered with dust; his disgusting shirt all in tatters reveals his arms and parts of his back; a leather suspender holds up what is left of his trousers, and his mud caked leather boots show gaping holes at every side.In the November 1849 letter to Francis and Marie Wey, Courbet described the painting as being the same size as his other painting (A Burial at Ornans) which was also displayed at the Paris Salon along with The Stone Breakers.

As Breton's career progressed he began to create idealized images of peasants and poor people.

With the painting Courbet achieved notoriety and the composition was considered to be a political statement supporting socialist ideals.

[3] Before the Paris Salon French poet Max Buchon viewed the painting and described the two men as "the dawn and twilight of modern galley-slave existence".

After the 1850 Paris Salon, French diplomat Louis de Geofroy described the sentiment in the painting by saying, "art that is made for everyone should be what everyone sees."

Fabien Pillet reviewed the work for Le Moniteur Universel and he stated that Courbet should be counted among the painters "who reveal a marked predilection for the least civilized of rustic customs and habits".

Writer Jules Champfleury declared, "starting today, critics can get ready to fight for or against realism in art.

[4] French social theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon called The Stone Breakers "a masterpiece in its genre".

[18] Art historian Sheila D. Muller has compared the composition's impact with that of Passing Mother's Grave because of the "monumental treatment of the commonplace".

[19] In 2009, art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz said, "The Stone Breakers ... challenged convention by rendering scenes from daily life on the large scale previously reserved for history painting and in an emphatically realistic style.