The Bridge at Courbevoie

From May 1887 Van Gogh worked his way along the Seine below Paris, out where the city thinned into factories, boat clubs and Sunday crowds, and about 30 canvases came from those months. This bridge ran from the Île de la Grande Jatte across to the Boulevard Bineau on the Courbevoie side. That island was familiar ground in Paris art talk just then, since Seurat had shown his big Sunday gathering on it at the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Van Gogh was out painting with Paul Signac that spring, taking up the new method at his own pace, in short dashes of colour laid side by side and sometimes over each other. He finished this one in a single session, with his attention on the reflections in the water.