アルジャントゥイユの鉄道橋

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.