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The majority of Nagy Balogh's pictures on navvies and workers in general came from the years 1910-14. The Wekerle housing estate whose building was started in 1910, as a direct experience and Millet's influence as an example to follow, played a major role. Ágoston Muszély, a friend of his, sent him a repreoduction of Millet's "Gleaners" in 1907. The subject matter and the form of expression attracted him because the lyric composition of workers, the massiveness of figures and silhouettes in the picture of the Barbizon master set Nagy Balogh an example which was worth following when he worked on his style. "Navvies", a picture with two figures, recalls Millet's "Angelus". The low horizon, the relationship of figures and the figure of the man leaning on the spade who is very similar to the preying figure of "Angelus" are all suggestive of it. Nagy Balogh's approach is fundamenally different from Millet's sentimental realism: his figures are working without showing emotions like robots, their existence is defined by movements of work reduced to the most important ones, they have hardly any lives of their own. The general and timeless nature of labour processes became a part of Nagy Balogh's monumental intentions which he asserted stronger and stronger in the 1910s. Timeless monumentality changes simple work into general and generalizes his figures to make them typical.
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