Edouard Manet - The Railway Button

The Railway (Le Chemin de fer), painted by Édouard Manet in 1873 in oil on canvas, presents Victorine Meurent and a young girl beside the tracks near the Gare Saint-Lazare in modern Paris. Meurent, appearing here for the last time as a model in Manet’s work, faces the viewer with an open book, a red fan and a sleeping puppy in her lap, while the girl turns away and grips the black iron railings to watch a passing train. The locomotive itself remains unseen, revealed only by a billowing cloud of steam beyond the fence. The Pont de l’Europe and Manet’s nearby studio appear in the background. By making railway technology almost invisible and concentrating instead on an everyday encounter, Manet transforms steam, iron and urban infrastructure into a striking image of modern Parisian life. Exhibited at the Salon of 1874, it was the only one of Manet’s three submitted oil paintings accepted by the jury that year.