The Mail Coach

Carl Locher's 'The Mail Coach' (1885) is a historical transport subject — the horse-drawn mail coach was still in living memory in the 1880s, having been largely superseded by the railway within Locher's lifetime. The mail coach as a nostalgic subject carried associations of pre-railway travel, the romance of the open road, and the social world of the coaching inn. Locher's Danish treatment of this subject placed it within the Nordic winter landscape context that was familiar from Scandinavian genre painting.

Locher renders the mail coach with attention to both the specific vehicle (its form, the horses, the driver and guard in their characteristic positions) and the landscape context of the journey — whether a winter road, a summer route, or a specific Danish landscape setting creates the atmospheric character of the subject. His handling of the coaches' movement through the landscape conveys the drama of pre-railway long-distance travel.