The Bridge at Argenteuil

By 1874 the little town of Argenteuil, a short train ride down the Seine from Paris, had become the unofficial capital of the new painting. Monet lived here, and Renoir, Manet and others came out to work beside him. The railway that carried them had also turned the river into a playground. On weekends Parisians rode out to sail, and the water filled with the white triangles of pleasure boats you see moored along the bank. The bridge itself was recent. The old one had been wrecked in the war with Prussia a few years before and rebuilt in iron and stone. Monet shows it on a bright, breezy day, the whole scene doubled in the moving water below.