Omnibus in de sneeuw 1874

Curator: What strikes you about this print, this tiny window into a snowy day in 1874? It’s titled “Omnibus in de sneeuw,” or "Omnibus in the Snow," etched by Jules Hé́reau. Editor: The bite of the snow! It feels crisp and melancholic, you know? Like a Currier and Ives print dipped in wistful longing. There’s such quiet desperation in the tiny figures huddled on that omnibus. Curator: Indeed. The etching technique here captures that wintery atmosphere, the bare trees, the weighty greys. Consider the omnibus itself – it wasn’t just a vehicle. It was a microcosm, representing social hierarchy, anxieties, and fleeting connections in an increasingly urbanising world. Editor: It’s cramped, literally and figuratively. You see all those little stories unfolding in that small space; there's a story brimming beneath each overcoat. And it looks so cold! I feel chilly just looking at it. Curator: The horses struggling through the snow, the passengers packed together... These aren't idealized images, mind you. Genre scenes such as this one reflect ordinary moments, human resilience, and quiet defiance in the face of the everyday. It embodies a cultural memory. Editor: It does make you wonder about each of their stories doesn’t it? What dreams were crushed getting onto that bus and whose hopes were up, up, up like steam from a horse’s breath? It reminds you of all that happened in such close proximity yet total isolation with your fellow travelers during a public transit commute, the city moving to some inevitable symphony. Curator: Exactly! And that resonance continues, doesn’t it? That sense of shared humanity in constricted circumstances. These images act as touchstones. Editor: Absolutely, that shared isolation in a crowd remains universal even across so much time and I for one felt this while staring.