A young woman looks up from her book, a puppy asleep in her lap, while a girl in a white dress turns her back to us and stares through the railings at the train tracks below. Of the train itself, we see only a cloud of steam.

The setting is near the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. The woman is Victorine Meurent, Manet’s model for Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. This was the last time she posed for him.