The Bridge in Monet's Garden

The Bridge in Monet's Garden, catalogued in German as Brücke in Monets Garten, is one of Claude Monet's first paintings of the wooden footbridge he built over his water lily pond at Giverny. This nearly square version, with yellow irises crowding the left foreground and the bridge reflected whole in the water, belongs to the mid-1890s, before the famous series of 1899. It is in a private collection. A closely matching canvas is catalogued by Daniel Wildenstein as number 1419a, Le Pont dans le jardin de Monet, dated 1895–96 and measuring about 89 by 92 centimeters, but that identification still needs confirming.

What you are looking at

The footbridge spans the picture from left to right in a low arch, its railings painted pale cream and yellow-green, with small blue touches marking the bolts. Unlike the later versions, where wisteria hangs over it and lilies crowd the water, the bridge here is open to the light and the pond is almost clear. Under it the water carries a nearly complete reflection of the arch, so the two curves together form a long lens shape across the middle of the canvas.

The foreground is crowded with color: clumps of yellow flag irises with sword-shaped blue-green leaves at lower left, more irises along the far bank under the bridge, and a pinkish sandy path entering at the left edge. The water itself is pink, violet and lilac, the reflection of sky and blossom rather than a surface of lily pads. Behind the bridge, trees and shrubs dissolve into a haze of green, mauve and gold, and at the far left a tall pink trunk rises out of the frame. Monet signed the canvas at lower left.

How it was painted

The picture is high-keyed and soft. Monet paints the foliage with short, broken touches of pastel color laid side by side, and the water with longer horizontal strokes that carry the colors of the bank down into the reflection. The bridge is the only firm drawing in the picture, and even it is made of loose strokes that wobble slightly, as if seen through warm air. The square format, unusual for Monet in these years, makes the composition feel centered and still: the arch and its reflection sit almost exactly in the middle.

The bridge and the water garden

Monet bought land across the road from his house at Giverny in 1893 and dug a pond fed by a diversion of the little river Epte. The arched wooden bridge, inspired by the Japanese prints he collected, was in place by 1895, and he first painted it that year. The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns a closely related landscape-format view of 1895 (Wildenstein 1419), with the same path, irises and reflected arch in warmer reds and oranges.

In 1899 he made a famous group of about a dozen views of the bridge, among them Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies in New York and The Water Lily Pond, Harmony in Green in Paris, followed in 1900 by versions with irises in the foreground like Harmony in Rose. This canvas is the seed of that series: the motif is already there, but the water is still empty. Our hub on the Japanese footbridge follows the motif from 1895 to 1924.

Later bridges

Monet returned to the motif in the last decade of his life, when cataracts clouded his vision. In those late canvases, such as The Japanese Bridge in Minneapolis, the structure almost vanishes in hot reds and browns. This version, by contrast, is airy and pastel, a record of a garden that was still young. The garden itself, replanted after 1977, can be visited at Giverny.

Where to see it

The painting is in a private collection. Pictures from the bridge series can be seen in many museums, including the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Musée d'Orsay and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, whose Japanese Footbridge of 1899 is one of the best known. See where to see Monet's paintings and the main Claude Monet page.