La Gare du Champ-de-Mars

Jean Francois Raffaelli

A simple scene of tracks leading to a trainyard is made alive with movement: in the crisscrossed curves of the steel rails, the bending horizon, the upward-moving curls of chimney and train smoke in the distance. Rafaelli was an established painter by this time, known for his elegant portrayals of lower and middle class life and scenes of industry, usually borne out on canvas in elegantly complex, layered paintings.

“La Gare…”, however, shows the artist’s interest in the possibilities of a stripped-down composition, eliminating the distractions of color and minimizing texture, focusing instead on rhythm and the power of tonal contrast acheived with intaglio printmaking.