The Railway

The Railway (French: Le Chemin de fer ) is a painting by Édouard Manet. It was 1872/73. It is the last portrait of his favorite model, Victorine Meurent, possibly intended as a tribute to their long-standing relationship.

Description

The canvas shows a woman accompanied by a girl (model was the daughter of Alphonse Hirsch) in front of the Gare Saint- Lazare train station. While the woman looking pensively out of the picture, the child uses the events to the other side of the grid, which divides the scene into foreground and background. Beyond the grating, the vapor clouds of a passing train and the facade of a house can be seen. Juliet Wilson - Bareau succeeded in showing that it is the home to that is, in the Manet had rented an apartment as a studio since July 1872: Rue Saint- Pétersbourg No. 4, near the Place de l'Europe. In the woman's womb is a sleeping dog and an open book. The right of the girl is to see a grape that Conzen evaluates to indicate that the picture was taken in the fall. Courthion points out that the view of the train tracks from the house Mallarmé ( Rue de Rome ), who was a close friend of Manet, to this day has remained the same.

Reaction of the critics

While Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and other Impressionists exhibited in the studio of the photographer Nadar, Manet submitted his images a persistently in the Salon de Paris. 1874 The railroad was adopted along with polychinelle in the salon and demanded loudly there Düchting " the ridicule of conservative critics out ". Jules Claretie have wondered whether Manet with such a " sketch" benevolent win a bet. The Journal Tintamarre spoke on May 10, 1874 by the " Railway to Charenton "; meant is a madhouse. Veuillot suspected even a " picturesque Delirium".

After all, there were also positive votes: Jules Castagnary approved the image in the Siècle "powerful luminosity ", and Philippe Burty raised in the newspaper La République française of 9 July 1874 Manet's influence "on the serious artists of his group " out. Also Mallarmé sat in La Renaissance for his friend a.

Manet's assessment

Manet himself wrote to the composition of the picture Antonin Proust 1880: It is difficult to imagine how difficult it is to put a person on a canvas so that it is alive and standing before a. A children's game is it, however, to paint two characters who gain from the meshing of personalities their appeal.

Today's review

For Conzen takes the railroad in Manet's work a central position. Especially in the design of " summarily indicated Background," she sees Manet's impressionistic view. It is the view of Victorine Meurents that stood even for The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia model, the " transported thinking about the transience and fragility of all things " one.

Provenance

Shortly after completion of the painting it acquired a friend of Manet baritone Jean -Baptiste Faure, from which it borrowed Manet in 1874 for exhibition in the Salon de Paris. Faure was Manet's lifetime, the most important collectors of his works, of which he acquired more than 60. He sold the railroad in 1881 for 5,400 francs to the art dealer Paul Durand- Ruel, who ran it for several years in its existence. In his article, he presented the picture first at the enfant regardant le chemin fer the, then as Le pont de l'Europe, and later as an A la gare Saint Lazare and Gare St. Lazare as last. Durand- Ruel sold the painting on December 31, 1898 for 100,000 francs to the New York sugar manufacturer Henry Osborne Havemeyer. Together with his wife Louisine W. Havemeyer wore this together an extensive art collection, which included 25 paintings by Manet. Mrs. Havemeyer left it after her death in 1929, more than 2,000 works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art The railroad, however, belonged to a small part of the collection, which was divided between the three Havemeyer children. Heritage of the painting The railroad was the son of Horace Havemeyer, who bequeathed the image after his death in 1956 in memory of his mother at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Swell

• Ina Conzen: Edouard Manet and the Impressionists, Hatje Cantz Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-7757-1201-1.
• Hajo Düchting: Manet, Paris life, Prestel Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7913-1445-9.
• Pierre Courthion: Manet, DuMont Verlag, Cologne, 1990, ISBN 3-7701-2598-3.
• Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen: Splendid legacy: the Havemeyer collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1993, ISBN 0-87099-664-9.
• Réunion des Musées Nationaux Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York ( ed.): Manet. Exhibition Catalogue, German edition: Frölich and Kaufmann, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88725-092-3.