The Railway

Édouard Manet painted this scene in 1873, using the garden of his friend Alphonse Hirsch, which overlooked the Gare Saint-Lazare railway cutting. A woman looks up from her book while a little girl watches the steam rising from the trains below.

The painting captures modern urban life: the iron railings, the billowing steam of industry, the new leisure class. The woman is Victorine Meurent, Manet's favorite model, who also posed for Olympia. The child is the daughter of a friend.

Critics at the 1874 Salon were puzzled, where was the railway? Only steam is visible. But this indirection was precisely Manet's modern point. It now hangs at the National Gallery of Art.