Gare Regulatrice 1916

This lithograph, Gare Regulatrice, was made by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen. I see a crowd of shadowy figures. You can almost smell the coal dust and feel the cold air. Looking at the frenetic and claustrophobic energy, I imagine Steinlen, in his Parisian world, trying to capture this sense of a modern crowd, of mass movement, in the way a painter like Daumier might have done. I notice how he has used the lithographic crayon to build up the tonality, moving back and forth across the page, smudging and layering. What emerges is a scene that pulses with nervous energy. I am reminded that artists don’t exist in a vacuum, but in constant dialogue with their peers, repurposing and reimagining techniques that go back centuries. As artists, we are always looking to make sense of a chaotic world. Steinlen does that here, allowing for the ambiguity and multiple interpretations.