The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil

When Claude Monet settled in Argenteuil in 1871, the town just outside Paris was still repairing itself. Its two bridges had been blown up during the Franco-Prussian War, and the railway bridge here was so new the stone had barely set. Monet painted it as exactly that, a clean, modern span striding across the Seine on pale piers, a little train trailing steam over the top. There is nothing nostalgic about it. Only a year or two earlier this crossing had been a war ruin, and now it carried Parisians out to the river on a Sunday. Monet lived at Argenteuil for about six years and painted the water, the boats and this bridge over and over, testing how fast he could catch light on a moving surface.