Édouard Manet
Original Title: Le Chemin de fer
Date: 1873; Paris, France
Style: Impressionism
Genre: genre painting
Materials: oil, canvas
Location: National Gallery of Art
Dimensions: 93.3 x 114.5 cm
The Gare Saint-Lazare, in 1873 Paris’s largest and busiest train station, is not seen in this painting. The advances in industrial technology and train travel, intrinsic to most contemporary depictions of the site, remain in Manet’s painting the almost invisible backdrop to a genre depiction of a woman and child.
Confined to a narrow space supported by the black bars of an iron fence and isolated by clouds of steam from a train passing below, Manet’s two models are enigmatic presences.
The woman is Victorine Meurent, Manet’s favorite model in the 1860s, and the child was the daughter of a fellow painter who allowed Manet to use his garden to create The Railway.
The composition is a complex contrapuntal apposition of the two figures: one dressed in a white dress adorned with a blue bow and the other dressed in dark blue with white embellishments; one with her hair tied up with a narrow black ribbon and the other with flowing braids under a black hat; and one a child standing looking at anonymous trains and buildings in the background and the other an adult seated looking forward to confront viewers directly.
Manet submitted four works to the 1874 Paris Salon. Of the four, only two were accepted, The Railway and a watercolor. Critics lambasted The Railway’s unfinished appearance and that the railway station itself was not well defined in the picture.
Although Manet never chose to officially associate himself with the impressionist group, this painting’s modern life scene as well as its loose, abstract effects show the influence of the younger artists on his work.
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