![the railway edouard manet the railway edouard manet](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oxMAAOSwNZxcxLxh/s-l640.jpg)
![the railway edouard manet the railway edouard manet](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/af/16/d6/af16d6d42aaba48f1fa72554c8b775e1.jpg)
Seated next to the young girl, Manet’s favorite model, Victorine Meurent, clearly plays the role of a companion, reserved for youth. As she grew up, her hem would drop and it would no longer be considered seemly to expose her arms and shoulders, except at the most formal of occasions. Her dress has the shorter skirt of childhood, with pantalettes peeking out at her knees. The girl, the child of Manet’s friend Alphonse Hirsch, wears a summery white dress trimmed with lace and a wide blue plaid sash. “Manet uses dress to define the different stages of women’s lives. The differing ages of the two figures are apparent from their variance in dress as noted by Groom in Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity: Aside from the context of the painting, the fashion choices of Manet for the two figures are important and suggestive of their lifestyle.
![the railway edouard manet the railway edouard manet](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b2/5f/b0/b25fb0d20bf814fad78e52984bd6aecf.jpg)
Victorine is one of Manet’s most favored models and she wears what curator Gloria Groom describes as a “splendid blue spring walking dress (perhaps made of twill or light wool), with trend large gold buttons on the bodice, and matching hat” (170). Perhaps the dog on Victorine’s lap suggests fidelity, which perpetuates the concept of protection Victorine represents in this painting. Furthermore, the dog appearing on Victorine’s lap is “suggestive of the same dog appearing in Titian’s Venus of Urbino–also the source for Manet’s Olympia“(Cachin 340). Also, the inclusion of objects such as the grapes spilling over the ledge are indicative of further collapsing “all of the rules of atmospheric perspective” (Pollitt). The fact that Victorine’s hair is down and not in an up-do suggests that she is a caretaker or older sister rather than a mother. The other primary figure, Victorine, contrastingly looks out and seems to be assessing the viewer as a way of protecting the little girl. The young girl to the right hand side of the painting has her back turned to the viewer, which rarely happens in Impressionist figure paintings. Manet’s Railway is extremely spatially ambiguous as the artist breaks all rules when it comes to placement of figures and objects. In fact, The Railway was the only Manet painting accepted by the Salon that year (Cachin 342). The looseness of brushstrokes in this painting is also “a symbol of the modern world” (Pollitt). This is apparent in The Railway as the setting is en plein air, meaning it is outdoors. Manet became “closely associated with the Impressionists” but “did not join their independent group exhibitions and remained committed to showing his work at the Salon” (Bomford 202). In the 1870s Manet became more interested in open-air figure scenes and, as art historian David Bomford notes, “his palette had noticeably brightened in response to the shift in his subject matter and he remained committed to the figure as the chief focus of his work” (203).
![the railway edouard manet the railway edouard manet](https://i.etsystatic.com/25974546/r/il/bd1f9b/3230391576/il_fullxfull.3230391576_j2j6.jpg)
Early in his career he courted controversy at the Salon with his infamous realist paintings, Luncheon on the Grass, exhibited at the 1863 Salon des refusés, and Olympia, which was exhibited at the official Salon of 1865 both “offered a direct challenge to contemporary conventions for representing the female nude” and “provoked a number of angry comments” (Bomford 202). Manet entered the studio of Thomas Couture in 1850 where he trained for six years.