A Cataclysm of Steam and Iron: The Shadow of Meudon and the Visualized Fear of the Railroad in Daumier’s Les Chemins de fer (1843–58) (2020)
The lithographic caricatures of Honoré Daumier are among the earliest and most frequent depictions of the railroad in French visual culture. Those for Le Charivari and La Caricature show a complex and shifting reaction to the introduction of the railroad that has remained unanalyzed by scholars. This essay will argue that Daumier’s works were dramatically altered by the Meudon rail accident (1842) and that the severity of the accident, its early occurrence, and its proximity to Paris all shifted Daumier’s perception of the railroad and made a lasting impact on his conception of the railroad. Where his early images downplay or laugh at the danger of the railroad, his later images show the railroad as dangerous and violent and cast doubt on the progressive promises advanced by supporters of industrialization. Rather than expressing a Luddite sentiment, Daumier focused on the human cost of the new technology and used his images to critique the technocratic promises of the French government of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire while avoiding official censorship.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Kerr, Ian J.;
(2007)
Engines of Change: The Railroads That Made India
(/isis/citation/CBB000950798/)
Article
Schwartz, Robert;
Gregory, Ian;
Thévenin, Thomas;
(2011)
Spatial History: Railways, Uneven Development, and Population Change in France and Great Britain, 1850--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001211163/)
Article
Kólbl-Ebert, Martina;
(2012)
Sketching Rocks and Landscape: Drawing as a Female Accomplishment in the Service of Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001251742/)
Article
Gül A. Russell;
(2020)
The Phrenological Illustrations of George Cruickshank (1792–1878): A Satire on Phrenology or Human Nature?
(/isis/citation/CBB228771297/)
Article
Mojica, Laia;
Martí-Henneberg, Jordi;
(2011)
Railways and Population Distribution: France, Spain, and Portugal, 1870--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001211161/)
Book
Matt Thompson;
(2015)
The Picturesque Railway: The Lithographs of John Cooke Bourne
(/isis/citation/CBB898445372/)
Article
Soppelsa, Peter;
(2011)
Visualizing Viaducts in 1880s Paris
(/isis/citation/CBB001210213/)
Book
Mark Aldrich;
(2018)
Back on Track: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1965–2015
(/isis/citation/CBB660965999/)
Book
Zachary Callen;
()
Railroads and American political development: Infrastructure, federalism, and state building
(/isis/citation/CBB971566202/)
Article
Philip Lloyd;
(June 2019)
The Irish Railway Commission (1836–39) aiming to reform railways in the United Kingdom and to improve the governance of Ireland
(/isis/citation/CBB517897661/)
Article
Hugo Silveira Pereira;
(2023)
The Camera and the Railway: Framing the Portuguese Empire and Technological Landscapes in Angola and Mozambique, 1880s–1910s
(/isis/citation/CBB732384908/)
Article
Vdovichenko, Eugene;
(2013)
Development and Definition of the Southern Ukraine Naval Ports and Admiralties Specializations in the First Quarter of the XIX Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001321277/)
Book
Nicolaïdis, Efthymios;
Chatzis, Konstantinos;
(2000)
Science, Technology, and the Nineteenth Century State
(/isis/citation/CBB000401225/)
Book
Churella, Albert J;
(2013)
The Pennsylvania Railroad. Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846--1917
(/isis/citation/CBB001421240/)
Book
Guldi, Jo;
(2012)
Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State
(/isis/citation/CBB001212551/)
Article
James Moore;
(August 2020)
The “last railway mania”: The Light Railways Act of 1896 and local railway construction in Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB510535838/)
Article
Schot, Johan;
Buiter, Hans;
Anastasiadou, ;
(2011)
The Dynamics of Transnational Railway Governance in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001210208/)
Book
Schot, J. W.;
Rip, Arie;
Lintsen, Harry;
(2010)
Technology and the making of The Netherlands: The age of contested modernization, 1890--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001180934/)
Book
Styran, Roberta McAfee;
Taylor, Robert R.;
(2012)
This Great National Object: Building the Nineteenth-Century Welland Canals
(/isis/citation/CBB001212538/)
Book
Craig A. R. Campbell;
(2014)
Agitating Images: Photography Against History in Indigenous Siberia
(/isis/citation/CBB600511423/)
Be the first to comment!