ABSTRACT
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.
