The Bridge at Argenteuil

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The Bridge at Argenteuil: Claude Monet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Claude Monet Oil Painting - The Bridge at Argenteuil

Keywords: Bridge, Argenteuil

Work Overview: The Bridge at Argenteuil
Claude Monet
Date: 1874
Style: Impressionism
Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm
Genre: cityscape
National Gallery of Art, Washington

In 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, Claude Monet painted the Argenteuil Bridge seven times, and the railway bridge which spans the Seine upstream from the village, four times. This shows how attached the artist was to the motif, using the flowing river as a counterpoint for the geometrical mass of the bridge and its piles reflected in the water.
Here the foreground is filled with sailboats at their mooring. The effects of light on the masts and on the roofs of the houses on the bank in the background are an opportunity for the play of complementary colours (orange and blue) which accentuate the glittering light. The Argenteuil Bridge exhibits great variety in treatment: the still firm outlines of the solid or structured elements, such as the sailboats and the bridge, a smooth, even texture for the water in the foreground, and choppy brushstrokes capturing the reflections in the middle ground.

Monet settled in Argenteuil in 1871, after his return from England. Apart from minor interruptions, he stayed here 1878. He was followed to Argenteuil by Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and Manet. The six-year period that he spent there was a prolific one; during his first year at Argenteuil alone, he produced almost as many paintings as he had during the three previous years combined. Of the many works the artist produced during this first year, Argenteuil among them, the majority depict the Seine.

Whereas Manet gained effect by sparkling accents standing out against low tones in his open-air pictures, Monet worked out the equation of light and colour more comprehensively and in more variety. In The Bridge at Argenteuil the equivalence is complete, the glow of light produced by pure and unmixed colour pervades the canvas and surrounds the forms appearing in it. The interplay between the short strokes indicative of ripples and the larger areas of colour is made with a typical flexibility of skill.

The accusation is sometimes made against the Impressionists that in their concern with atmosphere they lost sight of qualities of form and composition. Analysis of this painting would show, in spite of its apparent lack of pre-intended arrangement, how coherent it is in design. The verticals of the masts, of the houses and bridge piers and their reflections are set down firmly with an obvious sense of their pictorial value. There are those echoes of form and colour in which harmony of composition is to be found. The line of the furled sail is caught by the ribbed sky at the left; the warm tones of buildings are echoed in the details of the yachts; the dapple of clouds in the blue sky (with its deeper richness of blue in reflection) has its tonal equivalent in the reflections of the boats. To relax and look at the picture without analytic effort, however, is to see it resolve into an idyllic vision in which modern life has introduced no jarring note.

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Claude Monet

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