The Railway Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

Description of Eduard Manet’s painting "The Railway

Manet had an amazing talent for capturing seemingly ordinary scenes from everyday life and drawing other people’s attention to them. People engaged in everyday life, faces that one encounters just by walking down the street.

Many of Manet’s works simply shout - "Why do you need paintings, look around and see." "The Railroad" is one of these, a surprisingly light and simple painting. It shows a young girl sitting on the edge of a rail fence and a little girl peering over the rail. They may be sisters - or the girl may be a governess walking with her child. Either way, they are looking in different directions - you can’t see the girl’s face, but the girl is looking directly into the viewer’s face, as if he has just called out to her, and she is not happy to be torn away from the book. Maybe it’s about love. Maybe it’s about magical adventures.

Maybe it’s about simple ordinary life or about the thrilling adventures of some famous detective. In the arms of a girl sleeping a little puppy, the book is open in the middle. It is necessary to look away from the picture - and it seems that the girl went back to reading.

The girl is busy with other things. Standing on tiptoes, leaning forward, she looks behind the fence, at the railroad, where a train is arriving in a cloud of smoke and steam. Maybe she wants to go on a journey and find amazing adventures and good friends.

Perhaps she has never ridden a train and longs for it-or perhaps, on the contrary, she has and is indulging in sweet memories. Her hands are on the bars. Her head is slightly tilted - stubbornly, attentively. What for her older friend is only simple reality-a gray reality that can and should be traded for the reality of a book-for herself is a miracle, a mesmerizing fairy tale worth neglecting to read for. And the puppy sleeps. All he wants is people and a bone.