ジョワンヴィルのマルヌ川に架かる鉄道橋

Guillaumin painted this bridge over the Marne at Joinville, just east of Paris, around 1871, in the raw aftermath of France's defeat by Prussia and the collapse of the Paris Commune. He was one of the poorer among the young Impressionists and kept a day job to survive, working for the Paris-Orléans railway and later on the state's roads and bridges. So a railway bridge was his own daily world rather than a picturesque choice, and he gives it plainly, the iron span crossing calm water under a wide, pale sky. The canvas later belonged to Doctor Paul Gachet, the art-loving physician who, nearly 20 years on, would take care of Van Gogh in his last weeks at Auvers.