Voyogeurs appreciant de moins en moins les wagons de troisieme classe pendant l'hiver

Daumier was first published in a satirical weekly called La Silhouette, and there he received his first taste of both censorship and republican politics. Daumier fought his political battles with his lithographic crayon. The modern situations and inconveniences of an industrialized society were great fodder for Daumier's prints, drawings, and paintings. He was recording a new way of life, whether it was poking fun at high society visitors to an exhibition or the unhappy travel of huddled passengers on a train. Rail travel was a recurring theme for Daumier, who used the overcrowded and miserable conditions as an artistic, compositional challenge as well as a political statement.

In this print the figures are swaddled in heavy coats against the elements, leaning against each other for warmth, exposing only their tired, distant looking faces, knowing they are powerless against their plight and that their only option is to hold out until the journey's end. The physical discomforts of these modes of transport were the main butt of jokes in Le Charivari, addressing the issues of overcrowding, exposure to the elements, and mechanical problems on the railway. As early as 1839, Daumier made a lithograph of an omnibus, and began his first series of Chemins de fer (Railways) in 1843. He was still drawing these subjects in the 1860s using a similar pictorial theme-a row of people staring out at the viewer. This theme would become essential to some of his finest paintings.