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The Railway Station This long composition is dominated by three broad bands: figures, train and architecture, each with its own significance. In the foreground, rows of overlapping figures make up the action of departure on a train’s platform. The large, well-dressed central group creates a triangular shape with the hanging lamp above. Within that group, a woman wearing a paisley shawl bends to kiss a child who holds a cricket bat. An adolescent boy observes their activity while the young woman standing next to him lifts her pink skirt and reveals her crinoline. Behind them, three adults engage in a conversation. A man (holding his hand out) and woman flank either side of a dark bearded man who wears a top hat. Completing the triangle, a porter bends to lift some luggage. Groups on the right include three fashionable women in light colored, broad crinoline dresses. Their light shawls and lace bonnets complement their outfits. A woman in a pale orange dress holds the arm of the gentleman next to her. This directs the eye into another well-dressed family group. At the extreme right, two men in dark suits and top hats stop a man in a camel coat from boarding the train. He looks surprised as one of the gentleman hands him a paper. Concealed within the group, a red-coated soldier lifts a child into the air. Groups on the left include several people in motion. A porter moves a trolley of stripped boxes and hatboxes along the platform. Several adults and children move quickly to keep pace with him. Several figures stand off to the left. Their clothing is not as colorful or as grand as the figures closer to the immediate foreground. The middle ground is occupied with a warm brown band of box train cars. Two porters lift baskets and trunks to compartments on the top, a net cover sits on the side. The angled line of perspective moves to the left, and culminates the locomotive engine. Waiting for the train to leave the station, steam streams in a vertical line from the two idle cylinders. A man stands on the platform near the locomotive and talks to the train’s engineer. The arched roof of the train shed is a continuum of parallel lines that are pierced with openings for natural light and hanging gas lamps. The visual space that the roof occupies is equal to the band of figures and train. Background Paddington Station, the London terminus for the Great Western Railway built in the early 1850s by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the setting for this panorama of contemporary travel. Frith hired architectural draftsman W. Scott Morton to paint the roof with all of its attendant detail. Railway travel had become very fashionable by the 1860s. Excursions to the seaside became a popular respite for the lower and middle classes. Upper classes often took longer holidays in the country. Dressed in many levels of contemporary costume, Frith observes and creates a cross section of society on the train’s platform. Human life is paralleled with the advances in technology. The locomotive was based on the ‘Sultan’, a 4-2-2 broad gauge engine. Frith used contemporary photographs to aid with the complexities of the locomotive. Contrasted to the activity of the figures, and the stable lines of the train, the graceful arched lines of the carriage shed dominate the entire composition. When built in the early 1850s, it was considered state of the art industrial architecture and rivaled the recent halls of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Advances in the technology of industrial architecture allowed for soaring heights to be created from wrought and cast iron componants. Mr. Samuel Fry has recently been engaged in taking a series of negatives, 25 inches by 18 inches, and 10 inches by 8 inches, of the interior of the Great Western Station, engines, carriages, etc. for Mr. Frith, as aids to the production of his great painting Life at a Railway Station. Such is the value of the photograph in aiding the artist’s work, that he wonders now however they did without them! The most important of these changes is the springing up of new towns…the [railway] company erecting a refreshment room and a few sheds for their engines…Not the least important effect is the facilities they have afforded to the humbler classes for recreation. Short trips give the working classes the opportunity of seeing that which they would never have been able, under the old stage-coach and wagon dynasty, to behold. The artisan, cooped up, and constantly breathing bad air, now has the opportunity—on every available holiday—of making excursions into the country.
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