The Argenteuil railway bridge

The Railway Bridge by Argenteuil
Claude Monet , 1873
60 × 99 cm
oil on canvas
private property

The Argenteuil Railway Bridge (French: Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil ) is the title of a painting by the French painter Claude Monet from 1873 . The 60 × 99 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows the railway bridge rebuilt in Argenteuil over the Seine after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 as a symbol of progress and an optimistic future. Monet's landscape with the central depiction of an unadorned bridge constructed from prefabricated parts was unusually modern for contemporary painting. He was under the influence of the English painter William Turner and the Japanese color woodcuts of Ukiyo-e, which are new in Europe . In this painting, Monet documented the social upheavals of his time using the examples of industrialization and the emerging leisure society. The picture, painted in the Impressionist style, is one of Monet's main works of the 1870s and is in a private collection.

Image description

Monet's The Argenteuil Railway Bridge is an impressionist landscape view from 1873. The center of the picture is dominated by the modern concrete and steel construction of the bridge, which - cut from the left edge of the picture - leads over almost the entire width of the picture to a railway embankment beginning on the right edge of the picture. The elongated bridge also underlines the landscape format of the picture. Four pairs of pillars , each connected by a rectangular framework made of steel girders , support the steel structure with the double-track railway line. The bridge girder of the trough bridge , which appears bright in the sun, covers the two passenger trains crossing on the bridge up to the chimneys of the locomotives and the upper parts of the wagon. While there is no escaping steam from the locomotive on the left, the locomotive on the right emits a large white cloud of steam that follows the wind and develops over the entire length of the train. The cloud of steam mixes with the cloud formations in the sky, so that a play of colors of blue, pink and white is created for the viewer. The varied formation of the sky contrasts with the rigid construction of the bridge.

The Seine flows under the bridge and the cylindrical pillars of the bridge are reflected in the blue water. While the front columns shine almost white in the bright sunlight, the rear ones are in the shadow area of ​​the bridge and appear gray. It is similar with two sailing boats that cross the bridge on the river. The boat in front has just passed the bridge and can already be seen in full sunlight, which makes the wood of the hull appear brown and the sail appear white. A second boat, recognizable by a rear pair of bridges, is already in the shadow of the bridge. The sail of this boat appears gray and the hull black.

The river, which looks narrow a little below the center of the picture on the left edge of the picture, opens wide to the lower right corner of the picture, so that the rear bank of the picture runs horizontally, but the front bank line forms a diagonal from the left to the lower edge of the picture. In the image area below the bridge, to the left of the Seine, the front bank area can be seen in the form of an elongated triangle. In the lower left corner, where Claude Monet's signature can also be seen, there is a flat green growth. Between this green vegetation and the river, the riverside path also runs diagonally, on which two male people are seen from behind between the first pair of pillars of the bridge and the sailing boat in front. The man on the left is wearing a dark suit and a yellow straw hat. The man on the right is dressed in light-colored trousers, a gray vest, a white shirt and a brown cap. Both men have their eyes fixed on the course of the river with the bridge. A long shadow falls from the men to the left towards the bridge. Part of the flat bank reinforcement can also be seen to the right and left of the men.

On the other bank, next to the embankment beginning at the right edge of the picture below the bridge, the horizon of the opposite landscape is visible. Behind a narrow strip of meadow stand individual slender trees - possibly poplars - and behind them in the distance a forest area is indicated. In addition, behind the left pair of pillars of the bridge there are white and red spots of color, which mark the houses in the neighboring village of Gennevilliers .

Monet painted the picture on the banks of the Seine from Argenteuil, facing the river so that nothing of the city can be seen. To the left outside of the picture is the Argenteuil train station, which explains the lack of steam from the left locomotive. She has already slowed down before she comes to a stop in the station. The train moving to the right, on the other hand, has just left the station and is emitting a large cloud of steam that is characteristic of its acceleration. The Seine runs at this point in an east-west direction. Monet's location is close to the bank between the railway bridge and the Argenteuil road bridge 500 meters downstream. The bridge piers in the shadow and the shadow of the two men on the riverside path therefore provide information about a sun in the west and the afternoon as the time of day. The light clothing of the men and the lush green of the vegetation also indicate that summer is the season.

Thanks to Monet's location close to the bank, no tree obstructs the view of the bridge, which, when viewed from below, appears particularly massive. Monet's painting style is typical of his Impressionist style of the early 1870s. This becomes particularly clear in the blurred bank area in the foreground and the light reflections on the water, shown with dots of color.

Monet and Argenteuil

Monet, who had fled to London before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, returned to France via the Netherlands in September 1871 and settled in Argenteuil at the end of the same year. On the mediation of his painter friend Édouard Manet , whose family came from nearby Gennevilliers, he rented a house at 2 rue Pierre Guienne, not far from the railway bridge and the Argenteuil train station. The construction of the railway bridge in 1863 reduced the travel time to Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris, 10 kilometers away, to 15 minutes. For Monet, Argenteuil offered the opportunity to live in the country and still have the advantages of the big city within reach. The railroad brought numerous commuters from Argenteuil to the capital, and vice versa, the city, which was now developing into a Parisian suburb, was where the first industry settled. With industrialization and the increasing prosperity of broad sections of the population, an early leisure society emerged that used the railroad to the Parisian area for Sunday excursions. Argenteuil offered day trippers not only a historic town center and a picturesque landscape, but above all the Seine as a place for water sports. The sailing boats in the painting The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil illustrate this new way of spending free time. The river, which is widest and deepest at this point in the area around Paris, developed into a center for recreational sailing. The prestigious Parisian yacht club Cercle de la Voile de Paris settled in Argenteuil, and in 1867 the sailing competitions as part of the Paris World Exhibition took place here. Monet positioned the sailing boats on the Seine in the immediate vicinity of the railway bridge, underlining that these recreational sailors only came to Argenteuil by rail.

In the six years from December 1871 to January 1878 that Monet lived in Argenteuil, he created more than 170 paintings, many of which show the river landscape of the Seine. This includes several views of the road and rail bridges, both of which were destroyed by French troops during the Franco-Prussian War to prevent the enemy armies from advancing on Paris. When Monet arrived at Argenteuil, the railway bridge was still destroyed and the road bridge was in the process of being rebuilt. In 1872 Monet initially selected the repair work symbolizing the reconstruction of France after the war as a motif for several paintings. Even after the road bridge was completed, he repeatedly devoted himself to this subject. In contrast to the railway bridge, the road bridge built for pedestrians and carts, with its round arches and stone pillars, was a traditional construction. The unadorned concrete and iron construction of the railway bridge made of prefabricated parts, on the other hand, symbolized the modern era.

In addition to Monet, a large number of his painter friends came to Argenteuil in the 1870s. Alfred Sisley , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro , Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne visited him there . The enthusiastic sailing enthusiast Gustave Caillebotte later settled in Argenteuil himself. The art historian Paul Hayes Tucker described Argenteuil as the most important place for the Impressionists and Impressionism, and his colleague John Rewald stated: "Probably no place can be better identified with Impressionism than Argenteuil." Monet's choice of the image section in The Railway Bridge is striking from Argenteuil . In the background of the modern bridge is the peaceful landscape of the Île-de-France . When looking from the opposite bank, the first industrial companies in Argenteuils would have determined the background of the picture. The increasing industrialization of the place led Monet to move to Vetheuil, 60 kilometers away, in 1878, where he found more idyllic nature for his landscapes. When the art historian Leopold Reidemeister visited the places of Impressionism at the beginning of the 1960s, he realized with disillusionment in Argenteuil: “Of the magic of Argenteuil, which ... became the paradise of the Impressionists, ... is nowhere to be found. It's an industrial suburb of unusual neglect and ugliness. "

• 

  Adolphe Braun :
  Photograph of the destroyed Argenteuil railway bridge in
  1871

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Argenteuil Railway Station,
  1872

• 

  Claude Monet:
  View of the Argenteuil road bridge during repairs in
  1872

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Argenteuil basin in
  1872, in the picture the rebuilt road bridge

role models

Landscape depictions with a bridge have a long tradition in Western European art history. On the one hand bridges had the symbolic meaning of what connects them or on the other hand they served as a painterly detail of a picture composition. The painting The Bridge of Mantes by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , made a few years before Monet's railway bridge at Argenteuil , shows the traditional treatment of the bridge subject. Corot's depiction of a medieval bridge in an idyllic river landscape meets the need of contemporary viewers to find a mental escape in landscape painting. Corot breaks through the massive arched bridge with the trees in the foreground, whose narrow branches and delicate foliage soften the weight of the bridge construction. This stylistic device is missing in Monet's painting, who presents his bridge undisguised and directly and consciously chose a modern building instead of an idyllic landscape motif.

The influence of Japanese art on Monet's composition of the Argenteuil railway bridge is more evident than that of European painting. Presumably during the Paris World's Fair of 1867 he first saw Japanese colored woodblock prints of ukiyo-e , which he began to collect during his visit to Amsterdam in 1871. For example, the woodcut The Yahagi Bridge over the Yahagi River near Okazaki by Utagawa Hiroshige shows a bridge dominating the picture similar to Monet's view of the Argenteuil Railway Bridge . Bare, the bank in the foreground revealing the view of the bridge, an extreme underside view of the bridge that appears higher, a cruising boat, the left edge of the bridge and lush vegetation on the opposite bank are striking details that the Japanese artist Monet anticipated.

Models for Monet's Argenteuil railway bridge can also be found in photography. In the series of photographs of railway motifs created by Édouard Baldus (1813–1889) on behalf of the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord in the middle of the 19th century, there is a landscape with the Chantilly Viaduct from 1855, one of which is over a viaduct shows a moving locomotive from a similar perspective as seen in Monet's painting. The photograph of the Pont de l'Europe over the railway systems of the Gare Saint-Lazare, taken around 1868, is an example of how modern bridge architecture was captured by photographers even before Monet's paintings were made.

• 

  Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot:
  The bridge of Mantes
  1868-1870

• 

  Utagawa Hiroshige:
  The Yahagi Bridge over the Yahagi River near Okazaki
  1855

• 

  Édouard Baldus:
  Landscape with the Chantilly Viaduct,
  1855

• 

  Hélios Studio:
  Pont de l'Europe
  1868

The railroad - a symbol of progress

With the construction of the first railways in the first half of the 19th century, mobility, the movement of goods and industrialization also grew in France. This development impressed numerous artists and inspired them to new works. The French writer Jules Janin wrote of the railway: “The poetry of the 19th century, it must be said, is steam. For the first time it was only the true poets who, carried by the wings of the imagination, penetrated into unknown countries, today, however, on the flaming waves of steam power, everyone is a poet ”. Similarly, numerous 19th-century writers embraced the new mode of transport, including Émile Zola . He set a literary monument to a locomotive in La Bête Humaine . Musicians were also inspired by the railroad. Gioachino Rossini composed the piano piece A Little Excursion Train and Hector Berlioz wrote a song for railroad .

Mainly drawings and etchings that were used to illustrate newspapers or books and thus document the new technology found their way into the visual arts. For example, in 1837, the year the railway line from Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Laye was opened, Victor Hubert drew the trains and facilities for the new transport link. Charles-François Daubigny illustrated the rail travel guide Guide de voyageur de Paris à la mer , published by Jules Janin, with numerous illustrations, including a view of the Maisons-Laffitte railway bridge from 1862. In addition to these documenting views, caricaturists also devoted themselves to the railway. The drawing Impressions et Compressions de voyage by Honoré Daumier shows passengers falling into confusion - an exaggeration of the dangers of speed.

For a long time, painting was less open to the new means of transport, the artists of which in the 19th century predominantly oriented themselves towards the teachings of the Académie des Beaux-Arts . History painting was preferred with its Christian and historical themes, to which portraits, landscapes and still lifes were subordinate. Landscape painting, on the other hand, was mostly devoted to idyllic subjects in which buildings from the industrial age had no place. An early exception here is the painting Rain, Steam and Speed ​​by the English painter William Turner from 1844. Both his choice of subjects and his painting style were years ahead of developments in painting. Monet saw this painting, with a train on a railway bridge, in the National Gallery during his stay in London in 1870/71 .

• 

  Victor Hubert: View of the Paris–
  Saint-Germain-en-Laye railway in
  1837

• 

  Charles-François Daubigny:
  Maisons-Laffitte
  1862

• 

  Honoré Daumier:
  Impressions et Compressions de voyage
  1853

• 

  William Turner:
  Rain, Steam and Speed
  1844

The railway motif in Monet's factory

Monet's earliest artistic exploration of the railroad motif dates back to 1870. In the painting Railroad in Open Landscape - a train on the railway line between Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye is depicted - the actual motif is a summer meadow with trees on which is a little away a group of Sunday strollers. As a horizon line, Monet sketched wagons of a passenger train on the left edge of the picture, the front part of which disappears behind the treetops on the right. Only the upper part of the locomotive chimney towers over these trees and draws its cloud of steam behind it. The representation of the train, which can only be seen in the upper area, with the steam cloud slowly rising into the sky, was again taken up by Monet in The Railway Bridge of Argenteuil .

While Monet focused on the emerging leisure society in the railroad in the open landscape , in his next railroad painting he sketched the industrialization of his country. The work Der Zug , created in 1872, shows the industrial landscape of Robec / Déville near Rouen . The gloomy valley with its numerous factory chimneys is also crossed by a passenger train from left to right. The locomotive, placed this time in the foreground, blows a white cloud of steam across the canvas. In this description of contemporary reality, Monet eschewed any romanticism and unadorned the negative effects of technical progress. In the same year the equally gloomy view of the Argenteuil train station was created. It was only in the painting, The Railway Bridge of Argenteuil , made a year later, that Monet harmoniously combined the bridge's modern industrial architecture with the river landscape, which served as a place to relax.

After 1873, Monet turned repeatedly to the railway issue. In 1877 he worked particularly intensively on the series depicting the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. Views of the station hall, the tracks and the trains were created in numerous paintings. As in his other series pictures, Monet was primarily concerned with the depiction of light at different times of the day and weather conditions or, as John Rewald wrote: “In the train station he saw a motif and not a theme per se; he discovered and examined the painterly aspects of the machines, but cared neither about their ugliness, their usefulness or their beauty, nor about their relationship to humans ”.

Monet's last railroad pictures include his views of London's Charing Cross Bridge, also painted in series . The railway bridge with the trains traveling on it and the surrounding urban landscape can only be seen in outline in these images. For example, the version of a train on the bridge now in the Saint Louis Art Museum only shows a small cloud of steam. The actual motif of the painting is the colorful representation of a sunset with its light reflections on the river. Only the boats sketched in front of and behind the bridge are reminiscent of the sailing boats in The Argenteuil Railway Bridge . In the views of Charing Cross Bridge, as in Monet's other views of London from this period, the influence of William Turner and his painting Rain Steam and Speed , created more than half a century earlier, becomes clear .

• 

  Claude Monet:
  Railway in the Open Landscape
  1870

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Train
  1872

• 

  Claude Monet:
  Gare Saint-Lazare
  1877

• 

  Claude Monet:
  Charing Cross Bridge
  1899–1901

Railway bridges as the subject of other artists

Monet was not the first artist to deal with the railroad and railway bridges, and yet hardly any other painting symbolizes a connection between industrialization and the leisure society, nature and technology, or, as John Hayes Tucker notes, the "human triumph over nature" and a "new hope for the future". A comparison with paintings by Monet's contemporaries shows clear differences in the treatment of the same subject. Camille Pissarro's railway bridge at Pontoise , also built in 1873, shows the ideal landscape that was clearly shaped by previous generations of artists and is more reminiscent of Corot's bridge at Mantes . In both pictures, trees cut through the view of the bridge and an idyllic impression is created. In addition, Pissarro's picture is deserted. No pedestrians, no sailing boats and, above all, no locomotive disturbs the peace. The railway bridge has clearly moved into the distance and neither its function nor its modern architecture stand out clearly. Ten years later, Pissarro took up the motif of the Pontoise railway bridge again in a design for a fan. People on the left bank, boats on the river in the foreground and the railway bridge behind with a moving train show clear parallels to Monet's railway bridge at Argenteuil.

Quite different is the painting Le pont de l'Europe by Gustave Caillebotte from 1876, which shows a bridge over the railway systems at Gare Saint-Lazare. From the bridge, on which several streets intersect, the detailed reproduction of the iron construction of the parapet can be seen in the foreground, projecting diagonally into the center of the picture, while a side view can be seen in the background on the right. Although the left half of the picture and the lower part of the picture almost exclusively show the street with its passers-by, it is above all the massive iron construction of the bridge that dominates the picture. This painting, created three years after Monet's railway bridge at Argenteuil , shows how modern technology affects people's lives, but it lacks the balance between nature and technology that Monet tried to create in his picture. In the mid-1880s, Caillebotte took up the motif of the Argenteuil railway bridge, chosen by Monet more than ten years earlier. In this picture he shows a bare landscape from the point of view near the bridge, the only invigorating accents of which are a train approaching in the distance and the undulations of the water.

In Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 painting The Railway Bridge at Chatou , the painter hides the bridge mentioned in the title almost behind flowering fruit trees. This bridge, with its supports made of natural stone and the arched iron construction on top, corresponds more to the ideal of a bridge from its contemporaries. In contrast to Monet's railway bridge from 1873, in its unadorned and clear design, this bridge is based on traditional forms of bridge construction. And yet Renoir hides this bridge behind lush foliage, thus making the garden with its trees in the foreground the actual subject of the picture. Renoir did not seek a balance between nature and technology, but gave priority to the rendering of the landscape and placed the bridge in the background.

Clearly influenced by Monet, the painting was created in 1887 The railway bridge of Asnieres by Vincent van Gogh . In his picture, too, a passenger train drives over a Seine bridge and emits steam. The steam in this work, however, is dark, just as the entire picture appears gloomy despite the presence of colored brush dabs. Van Gogh reserved only a small part of the picture for the sky and dispensed with a bright blue sky, as can be seen in Monet's picture. The woman in the red dress is separated from the viewer by the bank boundary and remains lonely in the landscape. The art historian Hans Juncker describes the scene: "But instead of free, untouched nature, Van Gogh gives a landscape here that has been seized by structural engineering systems."

• 

  Camille Pissarro:
  The Pontoise Railway Bridge
  1873

• 

  Camille Pissarro:
  The Pontoise Railway Bridge
  1882–83

• 

  Gustave Caillebotte:
  Le pont de l'Europe
  1876

• 

  Gustave Caillebotte:
  The Seine and the Argenteuil Railway Bridge
  1885-87

• 

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
  The Chatou Railway Bridge
  1881

• 

  Vincent van Gogh:
  Seine bridge at Asnières
  1887

Variations on the theme

In addition to the version of the Argenteuil railway bridge from 1873, three other paintings with this title were created in the following year. These include two large-format paintings that are now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the Philadelphia Museum of Art , and a smaller oil study in the Musée Marmottan Monet . All three versions show the Argenteuil railway bridge from a point of view close to the bridge, which runs as a diagonal from the upper right corner to the center of the picture and is framed at both ends by the leaves of the trees. Due to the lush vegetation in the foreground and the bridge, which does not take up the entire width of the picture, it appears more harmoniously embedded in the landscape and does not, as in the version from 1873, cut through the center of the picture. One reason for the changed representation of the bridge in the series of three from 1874 could be the changed economic situation of Monet. 1872 and 1873 were financially successful years for him, in which he was able to sell numerous paintings to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel . The version of the Argenteuil railway bridge from 1873 is not only a symbol of technical progress and the reconstruction of France after the war of 1870/71, but also represents Monet's optimism for the future that year. An economic crisis that began in 1873 also had an impact on the art market, so that in early 1874 Durand-Ruel stopped buying. The first group exhibition of the Impressionists that took place in the spring of the same year was supposed to remedy this. In fact, Monet and his fellow painters received more attention, but the lucrative sales they had hoped for did not materialize. This explains the change in the representation of the three views of the railway bridge from 1874. The railway bridge is now part of the landscape and no longer the symbol of an optimistic future.

View of the Argenteuil Railway Bridge is another painting from 1874 with the river landscape of his place of residence. The railway bridge is shown here at some distance from the opposite bank of the river, as the second horizon line, with the silhouette of Argenteuil in the background. In the foreground is a summer meadow with a mother and her child on a walk. These are Monet's wife Camille and their seven year old son Jean. The railway bridge running horizontally in the center of the picture is depicted from a greater distance and only sketchily compared to the depiction from 1873 and appears here - unlike before in a light that was almost white from the sun - rather gray. The bridge is only part of the background in this painting, while the family and the landscape come to the fore.

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Argenteuil Railroad Bridge , 1874
  Philadelphia Museum of Art

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Argenteuil Railway Bridge , 1874
  Musée d'Orsay, Paris

• 

  Claude Monet:
  The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil , 1874
  Musée Marmottan, Paris

• 

  Claude Monet:
  View of the Argenteuil Railway Bridge,
  1874

Provenance

See also : List of Most Expensive Paintings

Monet was able to sell the Argenteuil railway bridge to the celebrated baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure just a year after it was completed . Together with three other paintings, including a view of the Argenteuil road bridge, Monet's first works entered the opera singer's collection in 1874. In addition to works by Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas, Faure acquired more than 50 paintings by Monet in the following years. Faure loaned the picture in April 1876 for the second group exhibition of the Impressionists in the rooms of the gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel , before he had it auctioned at the Paris auction house Drouot in April 1878. Alexandre Louis Philippe Marie Berthier, known as Prince de Wagram, bought the painting at this auction. The next owners of the picture were, one after the other, the Parisian gallery Alexandre Bernheim (later Bernheim-Jeune), Georges Petit, Galerie Barbazanges and Levesque. The Paris and New York-based collector Meyer Goodfriend then bought The Argenteuil Railroad Bridge and kept it until January 1923 when he auctioned it in New York's American Art Galleries. The London McLean Galleries sold the painting to the Parisian collector Alphonse Morhange in 1927. The work later found its way into the Maurice Barret-Decap collection, before being offered for sale by the Parisian art dealer Etienne Bignou around 1949. Through the agency of the London art dealer Arthur Tooth & Sons, the picture was then transferred to the collection of William A. Cargill in Scotland. On June 11, 1963, the Beverly Hills-based gallery owner Paul Kantor bought the Argenteuil Railway Bridge at an auction at Sotheby’s in London, who in the same year sold it on to the collectors Mr. and Mrs. Sydney R. Barlow, who also lived in Beverly Hills . At the auction of the Barlow Collection on April 2, 1979 at Sotheby's in London, the painting ended up in a private collection not known by name in Europe. The painting was auctioned again on November 28, 1988 at Christie's London auction house , where it was bought by the Monaco-based art dealer Nahmad for £ 6.8 million. He put the painting up for auction again on May 6, 2008 at Christie's in New York. With an auction result of $ 41,481,000, the Argenteuil Railway Bridge was Monet's most expensive painting for a few weeks before one of his water lily paintings changed hands for more than $ 80 million on June 24, 2008.

literature

• Geneviève Aitken, Marianne Delafond: La Collection d'estampes japonaises de Claude Monet à Giverny . La Bibliothèque des Arts, Lausanne 2003, ISBN 2-88453-109-2 .
• Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh (Ed.): Modernism and modernity . The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax 2004, ISBN 0-919616-41-0 .
• Anne Distel : Gustave Caillebotte, Urban Impressionist . Abbeville Press, New York 1995, ISBN 0-7892-0041-4 .
• Hans Juncker in the Emil G. Bührle collection . Exhibition catalog Zurich 1958.
• Michel Laclotte (ed.): L'impressionisme et le paysage français . Édition de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 1986 ISBN 2-7118-0285-X
• Charles S. Moffett : The new painting: impressionism 1874–1886 . National Gallery of Art, Washington and Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, San Francisco 1986, ISBN 0-88401-047-3
• Leopold Reidemeister : In the footsteps of the painters of the Ile de France . Propylaea Publishing House, Berlin 1963.
• John Rewald : The History of Impressionism. 7th edition. DuMont, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-7701-5561-0 .
• Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet: a distanced view of town and country . Reimer, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-496-01173-4 .
• Daniel Wildenstein : Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Wildenstein Institute, Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8228-1689-2 .
• Grace Seiberling: Monet in London . University of Washington Press, Seattle 1988, ISBN 0-939802-50-3 .
• Paul Hayes Tucker : Monet at Argenteuil . Yale University Press, New Haven 1982, ISBN 0-300-02577-7 .
• Paul Hayes Tucker: Claude Monet: life and art . Yale University Press, New Haven 1995, ISBN 0-300-06298-2 .
• Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Yale University Press, New Haven 2000, ISBN 0-300-08349-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ “The railway bridge, which had been built eight years before Monet's arrival in Argenteuil from prefabricated iron parts and poured concrete, represented the new and progressive of the place. “Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet - A distant view of town and country. Page 63.
2. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 110.
3. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Page 91.
4. ^ Daniel Wildenstein: Monet or the triumph of impressionism . Page 93.
5. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 10.
6. ↑ Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet - A distant look at city and country . Page 60.
7. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 9.
8. ↑ 195 meters wide and up to 21 meters deep in Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 14.
9. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 15.
10. ↑ The sailboats, symbols of the new industry of leisure, glide out effortlessly from under the piers, their sails blow by the same wind that blows the smoke from the train and Boating at Argenteuil, as Monet shows in this picture, was directly linked to the railroad in Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet and the Bourgeois Dream in Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh: Modernism and modernity, pages 23-26.
11. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet and the Bourgeois Dream: Argenteuil and the Modern Landscape in Benjamin HD Buchloh: Modernism and modernity . Page 21.
12. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 57.
13. ↑ Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet - A distant look at city and country . Page 63.
14. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 14.
15. ^ "And the suburb that became the most important to them and their movement was Argenteuil" in Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 14.
16. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. Page 204.
17. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 75.
18. ^ Leopold Reidemeister: In the footsteps of painters in the Ile de France . Page 105.
19. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Claude Monet, Life and Art . Page 71.
20. ↑ Michel Laclotte: L'impressionisme et le paysage français . Page 142.
21. ↑ Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet - A distant look at city and country . Page 74.
22. ↑ Susanne Weiß: Claude Monet - A distant look at city and country . Page 75.
23. ^ Grace Seiberling: Monet in London . Page 42.
24. ↑ Michel Laclotte: L'impressionisme et le paysage français . Page 156.
25. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 76.
26. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 4.
27. ↑ John Rewald: The History of Impressionism. Page 225.
28. ^ Grace Seiberling: Monet in London . Pages 19–53.
29. ^ "... man's triumph over nature ..." and "... the bridge carries across the river the new hope for the future ..." in Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 70.
30. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: Monet at Argenteuil . Page 71.
31. ^ Anne Distel: Gustave Caillebotte, Urban Impressionist . Page 102.
32. ^ Hans Juncker in the Emil G. Bührle Collection . Page 136.
33. ^ Paul Hayes Tucker: The Impressionists at Argenteuil . Page 112.
34. ^ Grace Seiberling: Monet in London . Page 45.
35. ^ Charles S. Moffett: The new painting: impressionism 1874-1886 , pages 162-63.
36. ↑ Scott Reyburn: Monet Set for Record $ 35 million, Christie's Says . www.bloomberg.com, February 22, 2008
37. ↑ Auction result published on the Christie's auction house homepage (lot 21). Accessed June 3, 2009
38. ^ Auction result New York Times online, June 25, 2008