Edouard Manet, "The Railway"



  I have always loved this painting.  It has always seemed so intimate to me.  A young woman, a young girl, and a small dog out for the day and resting on a bench.  She is looking straight at us as if we have interrupted her reading.  Her pleasant expression seems to indicate she is listening to us, wondering what we have to say.   Manet has painted the girl close enough to her so we must assume they are related, is this mother/daughter or maybe two sisters?   If we do a search of the painting we would discover the name of the model, but I prefer to allow her to remain anonymous pretending maybe some day, long ago, I knew her and I am there.
  The artist is Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883).  He was the oldest of the group of artists loosely associated with the French Impressionists.  Manet never considered himself part of this group, but there are huge similarities and they certainly influenced one another.   During his mature period, Manet painted out of doors and selected similar subjects, mostly French people out for the day enjoying sunshine.  The big difference was that Manet consistently used black, where Monet never did.  But, rather than allowing the color to depress and darken, Manet used it wisely, with lots of white and other bright colors, especially the beautiful blue in our painting today.
    Here are a couple of compositional elements I love about this work.  First look at the important use of white.  The train steam behind the fence flattens the overall space so our entire subjects are enclosed within a few feet of us. We are very close.  And look how the white of the girl's dress is connected to the book, the lace sleeves, the dog and then quietly moves up the buttons to the neck, face and back out to the steam.   
    Second the black lines of the iron fence are huge.  They act like a rhythm keeping the eye moving across the whole and stopping us so we focus on our females in the foreground.     
  "The Railway" was painted in 1873.  It is an oil on canvas measuring 44 x 52 inches.   It is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 
   
    Make Art a part of your life, it's a beautiful thing to do.   

Comments

  1. Char HarguthJuly 6, 2021 at 9:10 AM

    I've always liked this painting too. I'm amazed at how he makes the white of her dress, look "whiter than white" with the dark contrasts of of the woman's dress and the fence. He adds enough details in the background behind the steam to give us a glimpse of the busy area. A village or industry??Maybe both, since it's near the train track. It seems to be a hillside; there are steps on the right. They are a fashionable duo enjoying a pleasant (unstressed) moment. Just lovely!

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