Gare Saint-Lazare

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Gare Saint-Lazare is Paris' busiest railway station.

St Lazare station from the Pont de l'Europe

St Lazare which was first situated 200m north-west of its current position and called Embarcadère des Bâtignoles. The station was inaugurated by Marie-Amélie (wife of Louis-Philippe, King of the French) on 24 August 1837. The first line served by St Lazare station was the single track line to St Germain-en-Laye. In 1843 St Lazare was the terminal for 3 lines; by 1900 this number had tripled. The station had 14 platforms in 1854 after several enlargements and now boasts 27 platforms sorted in 6 destination groups. On 27 April 1924 the inner suburban lines were electrified with third rail 750V. The same lines were electrified using 25kV overhead wires in the 1960s.

1 Réseau Saint-Lazare
- 1.1 Suburban (Île de France / Transilien)
- 1.2 Inter City (Grandes Lignes)
2 Nearby stations
3 Gare Saint-Lazare in art and literature
4 See also
5 References
6 External link

[edit] Réseau Saint-Lazare

For more information on Réseau Saint-Lazare, see main article.

[edit] Suburban (Île de France / Transilien)

Regional train at Saint Lazare.

For more information on Transilien, see main article.

SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Argenteuil
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Bécon-les-Bruyères
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Boissy l'Aillerie
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Bueil
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Cergy-le-Haut
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Conflans-Sainte-Honorine
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Cormeilles-en-Parisis
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Gaillon Aubevoye
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Gisors Embranchement
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Le Stade
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Les Mureaux
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Maisons-Laffitte
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Mantes-la-Jolie
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Marly-le-Roi
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Nanterre - Université
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Oissel
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Pontoise
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Saint-Cloud
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Val-de-Reuil
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Vernon (Eure)
SNCF Gare Saint-Lazare - Versailles Rive Droite

[edit] Inter City (Grandes Lignes)

Intercity train at Saint Lazare.

The following SNCF Grandes Lignes intercity train services operate out of Saint-Lazare:

Gare Saint-Lazare - Vernon - Rouen - Le Havre
Gare Saint-Lazare - Evreux - Lisieux - Caen - Cherbourg
Gare Saint-Lazare - Evreux - Lisieux - Trouville-Deauville - Dives-Cabourg
Gare Saint-Lazare - Rouen- Dieppe

[edit] Nearby stations

Saint-Lazare Métro station
Haussmann Saint-Lazare RER station
Saint-Augustin Métro station
Europe Métro station
Havre Caumartin Métro station

[edit] Gare Saint-Lazare in art and literature

Claude Monet: Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877

The Gare Saint-Lazare has been represented in a number of artworks. This modern subject attracted artists during the Impressionist period and many of them lived in very close proximity to the Gare St-Lazare at various times during the 1870's and 1880's.

Édouard Manet lived close-by at 4 rue de Saint-Pétersbourg and two years after moving to the area he showed his painting "Le Chemin de Fer" at the Paris Salon in 1874. This painting,[1], now in the National Gallery of Art at Washington D.C., portrays a woman with a small dog and a book as she sits facing us in front of an iron fence while a young girl to her right is seen viewing the railroad track and steam beyond it. It was painted from the backyard of a friend's house on the nearby rue de Rome. At the time of its first exhibition it was caricatured and the subject of ridicule. [2] and [3]

Gustave Caillebotte also lived just a short walk away from the station. He painted Le Pont de l’Europe (The Bridge of Europe) in 1876 (now housed in the Petit Palais, Musée d’Art Moderne in Geneva, Switzerland) and "On the Pont de l'Europe" in 1876-80 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). While the former picture looks across the bridge with the ironworks diagonally crossing the picture to the right with a scene of partially interacting figures on the bridge to the left of it, the latter painting depicts the iron structure of the bridge face-on in a strong close-up of its industrial geometry with three male figures to the left side of the painting, all looking in different directions. (The Pont de l'Europe is a massive bridge spanning the railyard of the newly-expanded station which at that time had an iron-work trellis) [4]

In 1877, painter Claude Monet rented a studio near the Gare Saint-Lazare. That same year he exhibited seven paintings of the railway station in an impressionist painting exhibition. In total he completed a series of eleven paintings of this subject. [5], [6] and [7]

Other lesser-known artists who depicted the Gare Saint-Lazare were Jean Béraud who painted "The Place and Pont de l'Europe" in 1876-78 [8] and Norbert Goeneutte (1854-1894), an artist with a studio providing a very good view of the Pont de l'Europe, who painted this scene many times in the late 1880s. One of these is "The Pont de l'Europe and Gare Saint-Lazare" from ca. 1888 (now in the Baltimore Museum). [9]

An engraving showing the Place de l'Europe bridge at the time of its inauguration in 1868 was made by Auguste Lamy. [10]

In 1998 the Musée D'Orsay and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., put on an exhibit called "Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare" [11].

The Gare Saint-Lazare is mentioned or plays a role in the following literary works Emile Zola's La bête humaine and Roland Sadaune's Terminus St-Lazare (non-exhaustive list)