The Bridge at Argenteuil Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926)

Description of Claude Monet’s painting "The Bridge at Argenteuil"

Claude Monet’s landscape "The Bridge at Argenteuil" depicts a morning in a Parisian suburb where the artist lived for some time, wanting to get away from the bustle of the city and enjoy working in plein air. Fine art in France at the end of the nineteenth century underwent almost revolutionary turns, when a group of opinionated artists with all their works and actions resisted the established academic practice of admitting only the artists they liked into the salons. In 1873 they managed to open their own exhibition and in 1874, thanks to the painting by Claude Monet "Impression. Sunrise" the new direction of painting gets its own name - impressionism - from the French "impression", which means "impression".

And in all his works in the future, the young artist uses non-academic methods in order to convey the mood of nature, sunlight, unusual colors as brightly as possible. So from the picture "Bridge in Arzhantei" as if a fresh breeze is blowing, the leaves smell hot from the sun, birds’ chirping and casual conversation of two passers-by on the bridge can be heard. Bright reflections on the water and reflection of the fishing boat in the foreground are made by a special technique of separate contrasting strokes on the general color background and in the same blue as the sky with clouds in the background of the painting.

This optical effect creates not only the impression of a landscape filled with air and light, but it also emphasizes its fleetingness, the tremulousness of a single moment, the moment in which, for the artist, the branches of the shrubbery on the shore and the clouds stand still, and in a second they will continue to float and wobble in the wind. Even the undrawn details, as if incompleteness of the picture - all these techniques allowed the artist to convey the beauty of nature and the variability of the summer morning.