Der Pont Neuf

Renoir painted this in 1872, when Paris was catching its breath. The city had just come through a Prussian siege and then the bloody weeks of the Commune the year before, and here it is again, sunlit and busy and ordinary, people strolling the oldest bridge in the city as if nothing had happened. He worked from the first floor of a cafe on the riverbank, which he rented for a single day, and finished the whole scene in one sitting. His younger brother Edmond did the legwork down on the bridge, stopping walkers he found interesting and chatting to hold them in place long enough for Renoir to catch them from above. Edmond himself turns up twice in the crowd, in a straw boater with a walking stick.