Factories. Before the Industrial Revolution, people worked at home or in small workshops. Factories as concentrated sites of production where multiple tasks were performed under one roof were rare. The increasingly widespread appearance of factories was a clear sign that the process of manufacturing was changing. Indeed, they became a fundamental image in the European artist's eye, appearing on canvasses with regularity. French Impressionists in the 1870s and 1880s often included them as a matter of course in their landscapes.

Beginnings. Factories were initially small and spread around the countryside. Hardly more than large workrooms, women working with spinning jennies (a system by which eight threads could be spun rather than just a single thread) powered the machines by hand. As the machines grew larger and needed external sources of power, factory building was concentrated along streams, especially those...