Daumier's The Third-Class Carriage - Case Study Example

Daumier’s The Third-Class Carriage Daumier emerged in the late nineteenth century as a painter of the people and for the people. His republican stance was underscored by his early career as a brilliant caricaturist, but his paintings managed to capture the much deeper level with which he viewed his world. “This Daumier still remains to be located in his time. His complex attitude to the bourgeoisie was an attitude of real class consciousness … The attitude is tied to the peculiarities of Daumier’s class position, his equivocal membership of that artisan, semi-intellectual class which was being destroyed by industrialism. His feelings towards his class have their own evolution” (Clark, 1967: 651). It is this unique positioning within the class-conscious scene of his time, “in the proletariat, but not of it, in the bourgeoisie, but not of it” (Clark, 1967: 651), which helped Daumier create the unique style that emerged within his paintings. Unlike the satire that permeates his earlier caricatures, it is in his paintings that he was able to explore a completely different spiritual and aesthetic level. “They have, as novelist Henry James commented, a ‘strange seriousness.’ A few have religious themes, Kimball notes, but his best paintings – some family scenes, Third Class Carriage (1862-1864) … and several paintings of Don Quixote – are secular. Nevertheless, they possess rare depths of solitude and melancholy tenderness” (“The Other Daumier”, 2000: 111). A close examination of his Third Class Carriage, currently on display at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, reveals how his painting technique reinforces his meaning. Before this investigation can be undertaken, the meaning of this particular painting must first be defined. The central figures are a man and a woman with a small child sitting on the seat somewhat opposite of the viewpoint. Also visible is an old woman seated on the opposite side of the man and several passengers in the background. The mellow lighting of the carriage despite the brightness of the day outside as it can be glimpsed through the windows as well as the downcast features of the faces that can be seen all express a deep and abiding sadness. This communicates to the viewer the impression that none of these people hold out much hope for a happier future nor have they much reason to celebrate their current situations. The dilapidated top hat of one of the men in the background and less impressive headwear of some of the other passengers helps to illustrate this pervading sense of the downtrodden. The deep-seated social commentary portrayed in this image as well as in other paintings has long been recognized. While his earlier caricatures expressed a great deal of political commentary and satire, the artist was known to be a rather solitary, quiet man. “The good-natured disdain and sometimes the indignation with which Daumier executed his lithographs and water-colors is seldom to be found in his paintings. His painted world is a private world. Here Daumier’s anonymous citizens work quietly, suffer in silence the cold and discomfort of railway carriages” (Sharf, 1961: 359). His selection of subject for this painting wasn’t dictated by the needs of his employer or his public, but rather emerged from his own inner direction. “By nature he seems to have been morbidly inclined, and although showing at times a sometimes grim humor, his sensitiveness to the hardships of the life of the indigent struggling masses, rejected the lighter touches so often present in these passing dramas of humanity and dwelt on the sadness untempered by the relieving glimpses of fun” (F.H.A., 1947: 473). To Daumier, celebrations or expressions of fun detracted somewhat from the overall message of hopelessness he was trying to convey. The shifting population found on the train was an irresistible draw for Daumier because of the tendency for this sort of changing tide of humanity to echo the social situations of the various areas of the city, town or country and therefore the opportunity to complete a number of studies in a single ride, one that continued to change depending upon the hour or day of the week during which one traveled. In painting the Third-Class Carriage, Daumier shows his uncommon ability to not only observe, but understand the underlying meanings behind some of the body language, facial expression and attire accessories of his fellow passengers. To a great extent, his ability to capture a single emotion among all his subjects is the result of the abilities he’d developed through his caricature. Daumier is described as “the greatest French social satirist of all time who also painted for his own pleasure sympathetic pictures of washerwomen and other members of what Marxists call the proletariat” (Egbert, 1970: 178). This does not necessarily accurately reflect a single scene Daumier encountered as he was traveling, but instead a composite group assembled perhaps only under the painter’s brush as a means of illustrating the overall mood Daumier experienced among them. “No one of his time was so skilled as Daumier in rearranging visible material into harmonious assemblages of forms. Daumier the artist was probably both incapable of and unwilling to do so without projecting into these forms the peculiar passions and prejudices of Daumier the philosopher, the psychologist, the humorist” (R.R.T., 1923: 308). In this way, he was not much different from many other artists except in his extreme sensitivity to the true plight of the lower classes. In content and composition, “Daumier’s paintings were unique in their time. It seems clear that he was after something new. To satisfy a current demand for paintings, like those of Meissonier, whose minute forms defied all but the scrutiny of the magnifiying glass, was out of the question. Nor could Millet’s stone-like figures have fulfilled Daumier’s preference for softer, more fluid forms, breaking the rigid barriers of enclosing contours” (Sharf, 1961: 356). The composition of The Third-Class Carriage was one that Daumier had studied for a long time, with several sketches and a watercolor preceding the oil paintings of the same subject. The transition from lithographs to oil paintings expressed two sides of the same man, often connected through the images portrayed in his watercolors. “Daumier’s water-colors are a bridge between the world of actualities of the lithographs and the more contemplative images of the world in the paintings. They unite the descriptiveness of the former with the compressed visual means of the latter. Though they are without any text their meanings are quite clear; we are invited to supply our own” (Sharf, 1961: 359). The fact that he completed a few watercolors prior to completing the oil painting indicates he was working out how to most accurately blend these realities and ideas. He used a variety of techniques to translate these thoughts to canvas. The shadows that surround the many passengers on the train have the effect of bringing them into sharp focus for the viewer. This was a technique he used often to various degrees. “Not only do Daumier’s figures tend to dominate the foregrounds but frequently the artist closes in on them … In his oils, even more than in the water-colors or the lithographs and water-colors are extraneous to the expressive purpose of the oils, and the backgrounds are only neutral foils for his figures” (Sharf, 1961: 359). While the colors of the clothing and other aspects of the painting remain muted in the dull light, his choice of color has been determined rather unimportant by numerous critics, primarily because illustrating a picture was not Daumier’s purpose. “Daumier was not interested in color. His concentration on one essential image alone could not afford the distraction of color. The sun never shines in Daumier’s paintings. His people live in the harsh and dramatic illumination of the limelight or they materialize from the mellow shadows cast by the gas-light” (Sharf, 1961: 359). These aspects of light are also brought into play with his painting technique. Referring to his paintings in general, yet using The Third Class Carriage as an example, Shearer West pointed out that “many of his pictures remained unfinished, producing loosely handled, thickly impasto works of strong chiaroscuro” (1996). This use of impasto helps direct the light along the lines of the brush strokes, highlighting the importance of these strokes in taking on an aspect of the painting itself. This can be seen in the forehead of the young woman as she gazes down upon the face of her child. The paint is applied thickly and with downward curving short strokes that provide her with a look of concern, worry and perhaps regret that she cannot offer her child any better life than the one she now lives. The external lighting has the effect of increasing these worry lines while the long downward curving lines around the eyes and on her cheeks further accentuate the harshness of her life despite her apparent youth. Meanwhile, the face of the woman that can be seen behind her, left brighter than many of the other passengers in view, increases the perception of age. The face is left unfinished, missing a mouth and with only the barest hint of a nose and eyes. Heavy brushstrokes, here, also help accentuate the concept of age, drawing sharply across the forehead and heavily creased down the cheeks. The overall impression of these two women, seen together, is one of ragged concern, aged regardless of age and inevitability as the old woman seems little more than a fuzzy reflection of the younger. Part of his brilliance in using the impasto method to illuminate his mood on canvas might come from his preparatory techniques. “He sometimes molded his subjects in clay, as models from which to draw and paint. This may largely account for the malleable character of his figures which often seem squeezed into shape from a pliant material and then roughly detailed with a caressing thumb. The almost Michalangelesque monumentality of his forms is increased by the manner in which they are modeled with light” (Sharf, 1961: 359). An example of an almost claylike application in this painting can be found in the face of the gentleman in the foreground. In this example, it can be seen how the paint itself molds the careworn lines in the man’s face. His forehead remains mostly in shadow despite its closeness to the window thanks to the dilapidated top hat worn by the man behind him. The strokes tend to move upward and then downward in a smooth arc that gives his eyes a look of profound injury while the lines of the face melt downward, accenting the deep frown worn behind the beard. The impression is not of a man who is temporarily unhappy with a specific event in his life, but rather the expression of a man who has known little more than this profound disappointment and hurt that he now carries as a part of himself. Understanding the techniques that were used in both creating the initial images as well as the fine-tuned subtle changes that took place in the finished oils, it becomes possible to understand the extreme sympathy the artist felt for his fellow man. The figures are full of ineffable sadness, extreme hopelessness and staunch perseverance. “Daumier’s impact on Expressionism, a style never greatly in vogue in France, is self-evident. One of the few well-known French Expressionists, Georges Rouault, was himself an enormous admirer of Daumier, an artist on whom he published” (Melot, 1988: 19). This small glimpse into the faces of these people is created with such eloquence and insight that they become more than just “an expression of Daumier’s sympathy for workers displaced by the modernization of Paris under Napoleon III. Into the drawn and painted figures of his later work, Daumier infuses the pathos, the resistance, and the pride of the spirit of the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848” (Childs, 2000: 74). They become a means by which people even a century and more later might be able, if just for a moment, to sympathize as well with their strength, their perseverance and their hopeless resignation. “These pictures do far more than revisit the classic peasant themes of Realism: they offer quiet testimony to the loss and displacement experienced by these workers, who have been forced to live on the margins of the city” (Childs, 2000: 74-75), themes to which many in the modern world can still relate if the means of conveyance were changed only slightly. Works Cited Childs, Elizabeth C. “Review of Honore Daumier by Bruce Laughton.” Master Drawings. Vol. 38, N. 1, (Spring 2000)., pp. 73-76. Clark, T.J. “Review of Daumier: Man of His Time by Oliver Larkin.” The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 109, N. 776, (November 1967), p. 651. Egbert, Donald D. Social Radicalism and the Arts. London, 1970. F.H.A. “Daumier, Third-Class Railways Carriage (Book Review).” Royal Sociaty of Arts Journal. Vol. 94, N. 4744, (June 6, 1947), p. 472-474. Melot, Michael. “Daumier and Art History: Aesthetic Judgement/Political Judgment.” Oxford Art Journal. Vol. 11, N. 1, (1988), p. 3. “(The) Other Daumier.” Wilson Quarterly. Vol. 24, N. 3, (Summer 2000), p. 111. R.R.T. “Daumier.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 43, N. 249, (December 1923), pp. 308-309+311. Scharf, Aaron. “Daumier the Painter.” The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 103, N. 701, (August 1961), pp. 356-357+359. West, Shearer. The Bulfinch Guide to Art History: A Comprehensive Survey and Dictionary of Western Art and Architecture. New York: Bulfinch Press, 1996. Available online February 16, 2007 Read More