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The Third-Class Carriage
Honoré Daumier · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Honoré Daumier (1808–1879)
- Date
- c. 1862–1864
- Dimensions
- 65.4 x 90.2 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
The Third-Class Carriage shows poor passengers crowded on hard wooden benches in a cheap railway carriage. In the foreground sit an old woman with a basket, a young mother nursing her baby, and a sleeping boy.
A closer look
Daumier painted the scene with rough, sketchy brushwork and dark, earthy colours, in a dim light from the windows. The three figures in front form a quiet group across generations, each lost in their own thoughts, tired and resigned but dignified. Behind them, the other passengers, mostly men in top hats, are packed together without speaking. Railways were a symbol of modern progress, but the third class showed its social divisions. Daumier observes the urban poor with deep sympathy rather than caricature.
History of the painting
The painting belonged to Louisine Havemeyer and her husband Henry O. Havemeyer, the New York sugar magnate, who, advised by their friend Mary Cassatt, built one of the greatest collections of French 19th-century painting in America. When Louisine Havemeyer died in 1929 she bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, together with nearly two thousand other works.
More by Honoré Daumier
Famous works elsewhere
- The Melodrama 1860
- The Chess players 1865
- The Laundress 1863
- Don Quijote and Sancho Panza 1868