The Third-Class Carriage

Honoré Daumier’s The Third-Class Carriage, painted in the 1860s, shows a cross-section of working-class Parisians packed into a wooden railway carriage: an old woman with a basket, a mother nursing her child, a young man asleep, a boy leaning against his father. Daumier, best known as a satirical lithographer, here treats his subjects with deep sympathy and monumental gravity. The painting is a landmark of Realism and a pioneering image of modern urban life.