In the context of this artwork, explore the Factories of the Paintings.
As industrialization spread across the Parisian countryside, writers spoke out and artists painted a phenomenon called by some "banlieue" or "terrain vague".  Victor Hugo wrote a passage added to the 1861 edition of Les Misérables: "To wander in a kind of reverie, to take a stroll as they call it, is a good way for a philosopher to spend his time: particularly in that kind of bastard countryside, somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures, which surrounds certain great cities, notably Paris.  To observe the banlieue is to observe an amphibian.  End of trees, beginning of roofs, end of grass, beginning of paving stones, end of ploughed fields, beginning of shops, the end of the beaten track, the beginning of passions, the end of the murmur or things divine, the beginning of the noise of humankinds – all this holds an extraordinary interest.  And, thus, in these unattractive places, forever marked by the passer-by with the epithet sad, the promenades, apparently aimless, of the dreamer.To van Gogh, industrialization meant loss of a revered lifestyle, the simple life of the peasant. Paul van der Grijp, author of Art and Exoticism: An Anthropology of the Yearning for Authenticity, wrote of van Gogh's intention to portray his message of concern, "In his representations of the city he mainly paid attention to the expanding outskirts which swallowed up the countryside, whereby city and country life were often juxtaposed, sometimes in the form of trains for factories blotting the countryside." Van Gogh's painting Outskirts of Paris (F264) illustrates the looming encroachment of factories to the countryside.
Outskirts of Paris banlieue Victor Hugo Les Misérables