The bridge in this sunny, peaceful painting had been destroyed just a few years before Monet ever picked up his brush to paint it.
What you're looking at
Painted in 1874, this scene shows the road bridge at Argenteuil, a town on the Seine just outside Paris, busy with the pleasure boats that made the area famous with wealthy Parisians. A sailboat glides across the water, another sits with its sails furled near the shore, and two women drift by in a rowboat, one shading herself with a pink parasol.
A rebuilt bridge, and Monet's return to it
The bridge itself carries its own history. The original crossing was destroyed during the Franco-Prussian War, and the structure Monet painted here is the rebuilt version, standing again over the same stretch of river just a few years after the fighting ended. Monet returned to paint this same bridge and its river traffic repeatedly through the 1870s, drawn to how the light and boat activity changed from visit to visit.
The painting has also been catalogued under other titles over the years, including The Highway Bridge and Boat Basin, a reminder that even a well-known Impressionist painting's exact name can shift across museum records.
One detail to look for
Look at the quiet inlet near the bank, where the water pools calmly away from the main current. Monet often used these still corners of a river scene to contrast with the movement of the sailboats out on open water.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, so what you're hanging is honestly scaled to the painting Monet actually made. Shop the canvas print.