The Seine and the Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil

Argenteuil was Impressionist country. Monet and Renoir had painted its river and sailboats through the 1870s, so by the time Caillebotte took up the same stretch of the Seine it came with all that history attached. He had moved across the water to a village on the bank in 1881, half retired from the painting world he had spent much of his fortune supporting, and given over to boats and gardening. What caught him here was the new railway bridge, iron and concrete, a steam train about to cross it, the machine that carried Paris out to the suburbs on a Sunday. He left the canvas unfinished, the bridge more sketched than built, the strokes still open across the water.