Il vagone di terza classe

By the 1860s the railway had reached across France, and it sorted its passengers by the price of a ticket. Third class meant the cheapest fare and the hardest benches, and that is where Daumier sets us. On the seat facing us a young mother nurses her baby, an older woman rests her clasped hands on a basket, a boy has fallen asleep. Daumier had spent decades as a caricaturist, mocking politicians and the comfortable middle class in the Paris papers. Here there is no mockery. He gives these tired, silent travellers the weight and dignity he usually kept for history painting. The Ottawa canvas is one of three he worked on around this subject, and the one he brought closest to finished.