Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, Sonnenuntergang, Dunst

By 1896 Camille Pissarro was in his mid-sixties, and instead of the orchards and village lanes of his earlier work he set up at a hotel window in Rouen to paint the industrial waterfront of the Seine. He came back again and again to the Pont Boieldieu, the iron bridge over the river, recording it in different weather and light across a whole series. This is the version at sunset, with smoke. The subject is frankly modern: barges and steamboats, cranes along the quays, chimneys, and the haze of coal smoke catching the last colour of the sky. Pissarro, the oldest of the Impressionists and the one most drawn to working people, gave this smoky commercial river the same close attention others were giving to cathedrals and gardens. A crowd streams across the bridge in the foreground, small and busy against the glow.