ALISON HOKANSON: I am Alison Hokanson and I work in the Department of European Paintings here at the Museum. This is Honoré Daumier's “The Third-Class Carriage.” Daumier has constructed the view in this painting so that we seem to be sitting in a third-class railcar. Across from us we see a nursing mother and her baby, an old woman and a sleeping young boy. Daumier really embraced the possibilities that mass transit offered for portraying a mix of classes and social types crammed into close contact. This particular painting is unfinished. You can see the grid of squaring lines that Daumier used to transfer the composition. But it is still a really excellent example of his style. Daumier has used a very fluid line to describe the women's wrinkled clothes, their battered faces, their swollen hands, but at the same time, this is not a demeaning picture. The main figures are dignified. They’re calm and introverted and their bodies have a monumental weight to them. And beyond this, the two women are bathed in light, silhouetted against this frieze of dark heads, almost as if they have halos. Finally, the mood is solemn and restrained, which is not necessarily what you might expect from a third-class carriage. And this mood and this dignity are significant because unlike many other artists of his era, Daumier is eliciting our interest in these passengers without trivializing or sentimentalizing them.