Railroad Bridge, Argenteuil

Railroad Bridge, Argenteuil is one of a small group of pictures Claude Monet painted in 1873–74 of the railway bridge that carried the Paris line across the Seine at Argenteuil. Seen from the grassy bank almost underneath it, the bridge drives into the picture on massive pale pillars, with a train passing overhead and a sailboat on the river. The painting is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, part of the John G. Johnson Collection.

What you are looking at

The bridge is the whole subject. It enters from the upper right corner and runs diagonally left into the distance, its flat iron deck painted in cool blue-gray and its row of thick, cylindrical piers in cream and pale pink where the low sun strikes them, with lilac shadows on their far sides. Between the piers the iron lattice of the deck's supports can be seen, drawn in thin dark lines. On top, a short train of brown and red goods wagons crosses toward the right.

Below, the river is calm and pale, reflecting the piers as long, wavering columns of cream and blue. On the left a single white sailboat glides past, its sail catching the light, and beyond it the far bank is a soft band of trees in green and gold. The right foreground is a steep bank of grass and shrubs in dark greens, almost in shadow, with a few stakes or posts at the water's edge. The sky is a warm, hazy blue-gray, and above the bridge a bank of puffy clouds glows pink and white, lit from the side. The signature is at lower right.

Where and when it was painted

Monet lived at Argenteuil from late 1871 to 1878. The town was a quarter of an hour by train from the Gare Saint-Lazare, and the railway that made it a commuter town and a Sunday destination crossed the Seine on this bridge. The original had been destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War and was rebuilt in iron and concrete shortly before Monet arrived. For him it was a sign of the modern landscape, and he painted it as carefully as any natural motif. The town and its pictures are on our Argenteuil hub.

How it was painted

The handling is controlled and the colors are delicate. Monet built the piers out of warm and cool strokes laid side by side, so that their roundness comes from color temperature rather than shading. The water is painted in short horizontal strokes that break the reflections into ripples. The bank at right is darker and coarser, which pushes the luminous bridge and water back into space. The low, raking light suggests late afternoon or early evening.

The low viewpoint, almost underneath the bridge, is daring. It makes the structure loom and gives the picture a strong diagonal, from the dark bank at lower right to the bright distance at left, that recalls the compositions of Japanese prints Monet collected.

The Argenteuil bridges

Monet painted the railway bridge several times. The best-known version, The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil in the Musée d'Orsay, shows a steam train with a plume of smoke seen from the bank; a broader view is known from a detail of the private-collection version. In The Promenade with the Railroad Bridge of 1874, now in Saint Louis, the bridge recedes into the distance behind strolling figures. Monet also painted the town's road bridge, as in The Bridge at Argenteuil. Trains appear in his work from Train in the Countryside to the Gare Saint-Lazare series.

Ownership and where to see it

The painting belonged to the Philadelphia lawyer John G. Johnson, one of the great American collectors of his time, who left his collection to the city of Philadelphia on his death in 1917. It is shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Cat. 1050). For other collections, see where to see Monet's paintings.