Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
Le Pont d’Argenteuil (The Bridge at Argenteuil)
1875
Oil on canvas, 60 x 100 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
This painting raises some iconographic questions. Generally referred to as Argenteuil Bridge, the painting is given a different name by Daniel Wildenstein, the author of the catalogue raisonné of the works of Claude Monet, who rather singles out the Chatou railway bridge in the landscape depicted, seen from the island of Chiard. This suggestion would be more reasonable. Indeed, the work shows a perspective view, from bottom to top, of a railway bridge with wide arches. But it happens that the Argenteuil bridge, of the same design, is a road bridge (Le Pont d’Argenteuil, 1870, Musée d’Orsay, Paris); the railway bridge in the same city, on the other hand, “is not formed by a series of rounded arches but by a single arcade in the form of a cavity with compartments” which rests on “four pairs of elongated cement cylinders”, similar to columns and without arches (Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, 1874, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). The island of Chiard, also known as “the island of the Impressionists”, who frequented it regularly to paint en plein air, is located on the banks of the Seine, on the western outskirts of Paris.
The whole area, made up of a number of towns (Argenteuil, Asnières, Chatou) all very close to each other, was a popular Sunday destination for Parisians who came there to relax by the water; these places were, moreover, only half an hour from the Saint-Lazare station. The whole area, and in particular the Île de Chiard, was home to a number of artists’ homes in its rich vegetation. Monet himself rented a house in Argenteuil between 1872 and 1877, precisely to be as close as possible to these subjects that so fascinated him. True sociological novelties, these towns aroused the interest of the whole of French culture, from the so-called “mass” to the most sophisticated currents of the artistic and literary avant-garde. In his depictions of Argenteuil – although this name is often meant to refer to a much wider area – Monet shows a certain ambivalence.
In some paintings, he offers a bucolic vision from which most of the symbols of modernity are absent, or almost absent, and in this sense he aligns himself with the vision of everyday nature of Corot and Daubigny, far from the picturesque, almost untouched. In other works from the same period, on the other hand, the symbols of industrial progress alternate and mingle with those of rural life, as if to underline a possible harmony between nature and modernity. The serene images of regattas (Le bassin d’Argenteuil, 1872, Musée d’Orsay), often depicted by the artist, attracted by the play of water and light, also alternate with the metal architecture of modern bridges, which after the destruction of the Franco-Prussian War were redefining the landscape anew. The theme of railways had entered Monet‘s repertoire from 1874 onwards, when the artist painted numerous views of the Seine and the bridges crossing it outside Paris. Between 1850 and 1870, France experienced a great deal of industrial development supported by the construction of major infrastructures (railways, stations, bridges, viaducts) which were suddenly inserted into the urban and rural landscape, particularly around the capital. By 1871, 16,000 km of railway network already crossed the whole of France and painting was not indifferent to this fact. Monet shared his interest in railway motifs with several precursors of modern painting, such as the German Adolf Menzel and the Englishman William Turner, whose painting Rain, Steam and Speed he had seen in London during his stay there between 1870 and 1871. Monet‘s bridges, like the successive stations he painted in 1877 (particularly Saint-Lazare), do not constitute a “series” in the strict sense, but rather a “sequence”, according to Grace Seiberling’s definition of the same theme.
Compared with the famous series of the 1890s (Rouen Cathedral, for example), these paintings do not present a single concept or a general harmonisation carried out in the studio. Like the Argenteuil bridge, the Chatou bridge had also attracted the attention of many artists, who depicted it from different points of view (Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pont de chemin de fer à Chatou ou Les marronniers roses, 1881, Musée d’Orsay). The Buenos Aires painting is a “pure” landscape, emptied of human presence, entirely concentrated on the artist’s rapid reaction to nature, translated here into dense, vibrant foliage, fully developed in cold tones (blue, green, yellow). The viewpoint of the work – lowered to a level coinciding with the rich vegetation – from which the railway bridge crossed by a moving train can be seen, seems to want to underline the idea of a modernity that appeared to the artist unexpectedly and almost by chance. This work comes from the rich impressionist collection of Mercedes Santamarina. The MNBA has another work by Monet, La berge de la Seine (1880), from the International Art Exhibition of the Centenary, in 1910. (Barbara Musetti | MNBA)
See also:
• Argenteuil (France)