Explore the Reception of this artwork, The Railway.
Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manet's picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today".Shortly after it was completed, the painting was sold to baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure.  It was sold in 1881 for 5,400 francs to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who gave it several names: Enfant regardant le chemin de fer, Le pont de l'Europe, A la Gare St. Lazare, and later just Gare St. Lazare.  It was sold on 31 December 1898 for 100,000 francs to American Henry Osborne Havemeyer. His wife Louisine Havemeyer left 2,000 artworks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on her death in 1929, but she divided a small collection, including The Railway, among her three children.  The painting was donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1956 on the death of her son Horace Havemeyer.
National Gallery of Art Paris Salon Washington, D.C. Louisine Havemeyer Jean-Baptiste Faure Henry Osborne Havemeyer Paul Durand-Ruel Caricaturists Metropolitan Museum of Art