Sandvika, Norway

In the winter of 1895 Monet was 54 and went to Norway, mostly to see his stepson Jacques, who had married and settled near Christiania, the city now called Oslo. He arrived at the start of February and spent his first weeks writing home that the country was beautiful and that he could not find a thing in it he was able to paint. The snow flattened everything. Then he found Sandvika, a village about ten miles west of the capital, and painted it at least six times. What held him there was a small iron bridge over the river, near enough in shape to the Japanese footbridge he had built in his own garden at Giverny. He came home with 29 Norwegian canvases.