1855 -1865 · Railway, social classes and bodies in transit

Daumier locks the travelers within the framework of the wagon: third and second classes reveal fatigue, silence, family and hierarchy of modern transport.

The development of the railway profoundly transformed 19th century France. Honoré Daumier observes this modernity not through the locomotive, but from inside the cars where social classes are literally separated. The third class Wagon brings together in the foreground an elderly woman, a mother with her child and travelers crowded on simple benches. Their silence, their hands and their clothes make visible the physical cost of the trip. Daumier creates drawings, watercolors and oils around this composition, modifying the number of figures, light and degree of completion. The Second Class Car shows another density, other attitudes and a relative comfort, without removing the anonymity of the journey. The tight frame transforms the wagon into a social cut: no one dominates with a heroic story, but each body carries age, fatigue or expectation. These works are among the major images of modern mobility and its inequalities. The selection "Wagons and travelers by Honoré Daumier" notably compares The Third Class Wagon and The Third Class Wagon. Its reading favors details.

Daumier paints the railway without showing the machine: modernity can be read in the distance between bodies, benches and classes.