Edouard Manet (mah-NAY) 1832-1883 French Painter Edouard Manet was a transitional figure in 19th century French painting. Edouard Manet For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 1! The Railway, 1973 by Edouard Manet. The Railway, 1873. Edouard Manet has long been seen as a pioneer of modern art and a major contributor to the modernizing of French painting during the period 1863-83. Edouard Manet's The Railway is a colorful and charming scene of a woman with a little girl who looks down with interest onto the newly created railway lines of nineteenth century Paris.The smoke of a passing train obscures her view. Édouard Manet’s painting The Railway exemplifies some of the best techniques that this artist developed during his lifetime. Oil on canvas 36 3⁄4 in × 45 1⁄8 in Washington, National Gallery of Art (Pollitt, 2010). Édouard Manet (1832-1883). Édouard Manet’s close friend Charles Baudelaire, poet and art critic, consistently dwelled in his writing on the duality in life, and perhaps no painting by Manet reflects more this dichotomy of life in 1870s Paris than his enigmatic work The Railway of 1873, the next in the exciting series of exchanges between the Norton Simon Museum and the National Gallery of Art. https://www.khanacademy.org/.../realism/v/douard-manet-the-railway-1872-73 He bridged the classical tradition of Realism and the new style of Impressionism in the mid-1800s. Along with his two younger brothers, Manet grew up in a bourgeois environment, both … The vast majority of Manet's paintings depict scenes from daily life, observed on the streets of Paris. For instance, one should mention that Monet applies paint in both thick and thin layers. 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. A young woman, sitting beside her, looks up from her book to peer out. He was greatly influenced by Spanish painting, especially His father, August, was a dedicated, high-ranking civil servant and his mother, Eugenie, was the daughter of a diplomat. A little girl, her back turned, stands staring at it. Standing at roughly three by four feet, the work was accepted into the academy but was highly controversial due to its confusing content and lack of a concrete message. ART APPRECIATION For analysis of paintings by Realist artists like Manet, see: How to Appreciate Paintings.. Background. Courtesy of www.Manet.org: A train passes, leaving a cloud of steam in the air. The woman posing in the painting is Victorine Meurent, who also posed for Manet’s most astounding pictures: Luncheon on the Grass and the Olympia. It is one of Manet’s imperative paintings. It's a glimpse, caught one clear morning in Paris, by the railtracks outside the Gare Saint-Lazare. Édouard Manet was born into an upper-middle-class Parisian family. The Railway, by Edouard Manet, is an 1873 painting which is popularly known as the Gare Saint-Lazare.The painting is dominated by 2 figures: a middle-aged woman and a little girl. That's how the ordinary viewer has always seen this image and art historians too, especially those interested in sociology, Paris and urban development. Manet’s The Railway, 1873, was made famous by its abstruse nature and lack of clear subject matter, and has remained a topic of interpretation to this day.