The Railway
1873 · Oil on canvas · National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Unframed at this size — framing is available on 24×18.
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About this work
- Artist
- Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
- Year
- 1873
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 93.3 × 111.5 cm
- Collection
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
- Movement
- Impressionism
A young woman in a dark blue dress sits against the railings near the Gare Saint-Lazare with a book, a fan and a sleeping puppy in her lap, looking straight at the viewer, while a little girl in white with a big blue sash turns her back to watch the steam of a passing train. The woman is Victorine Meurent, the model for Olympia, in the last picture Manet painted of her; the girl was the daughter of his neighbour Alphonse Hirsch. Painted in 1873 in the modern quarter where Manet had his studio, it replaces a landscape backdrop with an iron grille and a cloud of vapour, and the two figures, one open and one closed to us, are never explained. Shown at the Salon of 1874, it baffled critics. It was given to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1956.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Details & materials
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About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.





















