Édouard Manet - The Railway

When this painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874, the critical reception was really quite scathing.

Labelled as “Baffling”, “Incoherent”, “Unfinished”, and “Like a caricature” . . . it was seen as a very odd choice for the work to even be given this title of “The Railway”, when pretty much every sign of the station, the rail track, or t…