The Third-Class Carriage

Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870. He earned a living producing caricatures and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still remembered today. He was a republican democrat, who satirized and lampooned the monarchy, aristocracy, clergy, politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, police, detectives, the wealthy, the military, the bourgeoisie, as well as his countrymen and human nature in general.

The Third-Class Carriage is the name of at least three oil paintings entitled made by the French painter Honoré Daumier. In a realistic manner, Daumier depicts the poverty and fortitude of working class travellers in a third class railway carriage. One oil-on canvas version, dated to c. 1862–1864 but left unfinished, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a similar but completed painting dated to c. 1863–1865 is in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. A third oil-on-panel version, dated to c. 1856–1858, with a different arrangement of the main three figures, is held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.