Hackney Carriage

Hackney Carriage — a work in watercolor rather than Béraud's more common oil medium — represents an interesting dimension of his practice. The hackney carriage (fiacre) was a fundamental institution of Parisian mobility throughout the nineteenth century, the cab-for-hire that connected the city's neighborhoods and carried all social classes through its streets until it was gradually replaced by the automobile after 1900. Béraud depicted fiacres frequently in his street scenes, often as props that localize a scene or indicate the social status of the figures entering or departing. A watercolor devoted specifically to a hackney carriage suggests either a rapid study from observation or a commercial commission — watercolor's speed and portability made it useful for quickly capturing a specific scene or vehicle.

Watercolor allows greater spontaneity than Béraud's typical oil technique, and a hackney carriage subject executed in this medium likely captures the vehicle in motion or at rest in a specific street context. The transparency of watercolor layers would be well suited to rendering the gloss of the carriage's lacquered surfaces and the complex tonal values of harness leather and horse coat.