The third class car.

Third Class Transportation demonstrates Daumier's renowned sympathy for the poor. Although he is a bitter caricaturist of the bourgeoisie and politicians, Daumier drops satire and draws a sensitive image of the poor. A family sits together in the third class car, folded in on themselves, isolated and absorbed in their thoughts.

The background takes up more space than the foreground and is very detailed. From what the little boy can see of their clothing, it is presumed that those in the background are from a higher class station. They talk animatedly among themselves and some turn to the direction of the third-class passengers, but no one involves them directly. The family of four sits in the opposite direction, emphasizing their isolation from the rest of the travelers. There is also a comparative stillness to his movements, which most scholars have interpreted as tiredness. There is a window in the foreground and although the light reaches the family, it can be interpreted that they are far from the window and therefore there are possibilities. The familiar figures are drawn in a larger proportion than would justify their distance from the rest of the passengers, which gives them a more dominant presence.

Honore Daumier was born in 1808 in Marseille, France. His career was one of the most unusual in the history of nineteenth-century art. Famous in his time as France's best-known caricaturist, he was not recognized in his true stature, as one of the most profoundly original and far-reaching realists of the time. Even today, its essential quality may not be fully understood; the wonders of his pictorial inventions are half hidden in the profusion of his enormous lithographic work, the acute truths of his observation overshadowed by his comic genius and his penchant for monumental stylization. Daumier died on February 10, 1879 in Valmondois, France.