Le pont japonais

Le pont japonais (The Japanese Bridge) is a late painting by Claude Monet of the wooden footbridge over the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, dated between about 1918 and 1924 and catalogued by Wildenstein as no. 1927. The unsigned canvas measures 89 by 100 centimeters. It was among the works in Monet's studio at his death and entered the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris with the bequest of his son Michel in 1966.

What you're looking at

The color here is rust and brick: dense reds broken by olive, moss and yellow-green, with blue-violet in the deepest shadows. The bridge is a broad, slightly flattened arch spanning the canvas a little above the center, painted in deep red-brown with a dark green rim. Above it, the foliage is a thick weave of red, orange and green strokes, the greens brightest at the top center, where they turn almost yellow in the light.

The center of the canvas, under the arch, is a dark hollow: violet, crimson and blue-black, with a single bright magenta accent and a few thin vertical strokes of green and yellow, the willow's fronds. The pond below is a band of brick red and orange laid in horizontal strokes, with dark strokes running parallel to suggest ripples. At the lower left, a rounded mass of blue-green and gray marks a clump of leaves on the bank; its cool color is the strongest contrast in the picture. On the right, vertical strokes of red and blue descend the full height of the canvas, the willow in shadow.

The impression is of late afternoon heat, or of autumn, with the whole garden turned to rust.

Monet's late bridges

Monet painted the footbridge first in a classic group of 1899–1900, such as The Japanese Footbridge in Washington, in clear greens and blues. About 1918, while working on the Orangerie Water Lilies, he returned to the motif in a much freer way. Cataracts had been troubling his vision since 1912; until an operation on his right eye in 1923, he saw colors dulled and warmed. Some two dozen bridge canvases survive from these years, and most of them, including this one, belong to the Musée Marmottan Monet.

How it was painted

The surface is densely worked, with stroke laid over stroke so that little ground shows except at the margins. Monet's brush moves in all directions: curving through the foliage, vertical in the willow, horizontal in the water. Red and green, complementary colors, are placed side by side and allowed to mix where they meet, producing the brick and olive tones that give the picture its weight. The bridge is not drawn but emerges as the place where the dark strokes bend into a curve.

How this version differs

Among the four Marmottan bridges of the same size, this is the most closely woven. The Japanese Bridge (W 1928) is brighter and more open, a blaze of vermilion and orange; Le pont japonais (W 1923) is golden and sunlit; the Japanese Bridge (W 1924) is darker, in plum and russet. This canvas sits between them: hot like W 1928, heavy like W 1924. The cool blue clump at lower left, missing from its companions, is its distinguishing detail. For all the versions, see the Japanese Footbridge series; for the garden, Monet's Giverny.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, home to the world's largest collection of works by Claude Monet. The late bridges are displayed in rotation in the museum's lower-level Monet gallery and are frequently lent abroad.