Édouard Manet (1832-1883) Gare Saint-Lazare Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother Louisine W. Havemeyer

As chic as a fashion plate, Manet’s picture shows how he reacted against the academy and found a fresh style to paint the life of his times. The fashionable young woman is Victorine Meurend, Manet’s favorite model, whom he painted in The Picnic and Olympia, where his bold treatment of the nude figure shocked or entertained most of Paris. The little girl was the daughter of a friend, in whose garden Manet painted the picture. The child looks through the iron railing, evidently fascinated by a train that has pulled into the Saint-Lazare station in Paris. Obligingly the train has left behind it a cloud of white smoke which obliterates unwanted detail from the background so that Manet can arrange the figures in a handsome pattern against the regular intervals of the railing.

Like the Impressionists Manet used light colors and, by suppressing shadows, he secured the effect of bright, outdoor lighting. While he satisfies the Realist’s love for an apparently casual composition, with its figures off-center and “unposed,” actually he has sensitively composed them according to principles learned from Japanese prints. As in the Oriental woodcuts, here, too, broad silhouettes of contrasting colors lend the picture its sparkle, while graceful curving contours in the figures and costumes form a pleasing design.

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Canvas. 36¾ × 45⅛ Dated 1873

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