Toorop's choise for the unusual, dramatic subject matter may have been triggered by an actual event, a strike in the industrial city of Charleroi in 1886. The circle of progressive lawyers around Octave Maus that founded Les Vingt was deeply committed to social causes and Toorop had already exhibited other paintings at their yearly Salons that reflected this commitment, albeit in a different, Courbet-like technique dominated by the use of thepalet-knife. The new style of Seurat and Signac followers seemed to be eminently suited to such social subjects. In fact, the inventors of the stylewere of socialist and anarchist conviction. They saw in this style a rupture with class-dominated painting for the sake of objective analysis, not only of light, texture or space, but also of social conditions. It is interesting that Toorop, who was a great admirer of Courbet, Millet and also Josef Israels, pushed this social comment much further than the inventors of the style. By concentrating on a few figures who embody the ominous events to come, he moreover succeeded in lifting his painting above the depiction of an incident. As such, the painting already announces a symbolist esthetic that Toorop was soon to embrace, again in a completely different style.