Signac had attempted to fuse reason and aesthetic emotion through decorative propaganda. Critics like Verhaeren and Van de Velde endorsed the aesthetic effort, while reacting to the propaganda with more reserve. But the didactic character of Au temps d'harmonie indicates the extent to which Signac must have been thinking of another audience: the interested, sympathetic proletarians evoked in his 1891 "Impressionists and Revolutionaries." This desired audience, as well as the generally positive reactions of Belgian friends and critics like Théo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Van de Velde, and Verhaeren, is no doubt what prompted Signac to offer Au temps d'harmonie for the new socialist Maison du Peuple in Brussels while it was still under construction.125 Earlier that year, Signac began work on Le démolisseur (The Wrecker), 1897-1899 (Fig. 5), which he imagined as part of a series of decorative celebrations of labor in the spirit of Au temps d'harmonie.126 The projected subjects, "the haulers, the wreckers, the builders," had a social resonance beyond anarchism, perhaps with the intention of retaining a wider range of potential settings.127