The Pontoise Railway Bridge
The railway bridge of Pontoise ( French Le Pont du chemin de fer, Pontoise ) is the title of a painting by the French painter Camille Pissarro from around 1873 . The 50 cm × 65 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows the railway bridge built in 1860 over the Oise between Pontoise and Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône (approx. 30 km north-west of Paris ), which today are both part of the community ( Communauté d 'agglomération ) belonging to Cergy-Pontoise . The river forms the border between the Vexin and the Île-de-France region .
Although Pissarro created more than 300 pictures and countless drawings from, around and in the French city of Pontoise between 1866 and 1883 and also increasingly devoted himself to depicting the railway line through the town around 1873/74, the Pontoise Railway Bridge is the only representation of the Building by the artist in the form of a painting. The other two pictures in this series are La route au bord du chemin de fer, effet de neige (1873) and La barrière du chemin de fer aux pâtis, près Pontoise (1873–74).
The original bridge shown is no longer preserved and was replaced by a new building in 1932, 1946 and 1998.
Image description
Pissarros The Pontoise railway bridge is an impressionist landscape view created around 1873. The picture shows the river Oise running diagonally from the bottom right to the left center of the picture against the direction of flow on an almost clear sunny day with a blue sky, which is not clouded by a multitude of indicated cumulus clouds . The sky takes up a good half of the picture area. The viewer of the scene stands on the east bank of the river on the riverside path and looks across the water to a collection of houses opposite the city of Pontoise, which is shown in the right half of the picture and is reflected in the water. Of the more than a dozen houses, only the mostly red roof areas can be seen behind the embankment; the only exception is a higher house on the bank, which is shown with a light facade on the outskirts on the river bank.
The left half of the picture is dominated by a large leafy tree that stands between the narrow bank path and the river. It covers a good part of the main motif of the picture, the railway bridge, which extends horizontally in the lower third of the picture from the left edge to the right half of the picture and merges into the embankment in place. Shortly before the crossing, but still on the bridge, a small steam locomotive can be seen, which is emitting white smoke from its chimney and heading towards Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône. It drives alone without attached wagons and can only be seen on closer inspection. Behind the railway bridge, the old medieval stone arch bridge can be seen, which gives the place Pontoise ( bridge over the Oise ) its name. In the narrow section of the picture, to the left of the large tree, the railway bridge also spans the riverside path, which leads behind the building to a house with a blue facade and a dark roof, the only building from Pontoise itself. It is cut behind by a smaller tree on the left covered by the bridge, which has its left abutment there and merges into the land line. Between the big tree and the place, behind the bridge, a gentle hilly landscape is depicted, which is covered with a small forest.
Another tall tree, also cut, frames the scene on the right edge of the picture. In contrast to the other two trees, which are shown completely in full sunlight, it is painted in darker colors and appears to be in shadow on the opposite bank. It is noticeable that the artist does not depict people, boats on the river or other human activities in the picture. The bright riverside path in the foreground is empty and the gaze is focused on a collection of flowers in the foreground and a small, vertical, seemingly useless post at the edge of the path.
Pissarro's representation of rivers and railways
The depictions of river landscapes did not become an archetypal subject in French landscape painting until the late 1860s and 1870s . Depictions of rivers, also in the form of waterways, have been a popular motif in illustrated landscape guides in various French regions since the 17th century, especially in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, but hardly found any echo as a motif in landscape painting. In the mid-19th century, landscape painters and forerunners of the Impressionists such as Corot , Chintreuil , Millet , Rousseau and Diaz depicted bodies of water mainly as small streams and ponds that accented forests or open landscapes, but were not the main motif.
In contrast to this were the broad rivers used as waterways, which later lined with buildings and filled with ships and boats dominated the landscapes of Lépine , Sisley , Renoir , Monet , Manet and Pissarro. In addition to the landscape guides mentioned, the Impressionists were inspired above all by Dutch landscape painting of the 17th century, especially the pictures by Salomon van Ruysdael , Jan van Goyen and their successors, who illustrated the importance of the Dutch system of canals and roads as an economic and infrastructure of national importance.
Adolfo d'Hastrel : illustration of the newly built railway bridge at Pontoise, engraving, 1862
Salomon van Ruysdael: Deventer lakes from north-west
Jan van Goyen view of the Merwede near Dordrecht
Both models, French illustrations such as Dutch river painting, can be found combined in the works of Daubigny , who, together with Jongkind , can be counted among the immediate forerunners of the Impressionists. Daubigny's quality as a travel illustrator and landscape painter gave him the opportunity to present river motifs in art exhibitions and thus introduce them to painting. His painting Les Laveuses au bord de la Seine à Bonnières (1860) can be seen as a direct model for Pissarro's Bords de la Marne à Chennvières (1865).
In addition to agriculture, the port of Pontoise was the town's most important economic factor. The Oise connected the Belgian economic area with the greater Paris area and the Pontois river port was used extensively as a transshipment point in the 19th century, according to a monograph from 1899. For Pissarro, the port made Pontoise more than just a picturesque place in the landscape. This fact is also the cause of the completely contrary portrayal of Pissarro the Oise in Pontoise in contrast to Monet's portrayals of the Seine , which are often viewed as key works of Impressionism in their purest form. For Monet, the river is a place of fun and relaxation, but also a place of technical progress, symbolized, among other things, by railway bridges that span the scenery. Strollers promenade along the banks of Monet's Seine, pavilions line the river and the water is full of sailboats and swimmers.
Clause Monet: Régate à Argenteuil , 1872
Claude Monet: Le bassin d'Argenteuil , 1872
Claude Monet: Le pont de chemin der fer à Argenteuil , 1873
Claude Monet: Le pont à Argenteuil , 1874
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Pissarro, on the other hand, depicts the Oise in a completely contrary way: factories and farms are built on the river, farm workers use the towpaths along the course of the river, horse-drawn barges and steamers ply on the river. A sailboat appears only once in his work of the 1860s and 1870s. In contrast to Monet's boats, which slide freely in all directions, Pissarro depicts the movements on the water in a targeted manner, either parallel to the picture or penetrating into the picture surface. Worker figures do not fish in the Oise for pleasure, but to win a meal, draw drinking water from the river or wash their laundry in the river - a complete contrast to the mostly bourgeois leisure activities on Monet's river motifs. The river at Pissarro is integrated into the agricultural and industrial needs of the place. Pissarro's depictions of the river also differ formally from those of Monet or Daubigny's: With Pissarro, the viewer is always on the bank, never on the surface of the water. He emphasizes the bank with its trees, fields and figures on the bank, the distant river in his view is above all a connecting artery from Pontoise to the far distance.
Camille Pissarro: Barges at Pontoise
Camille Pissarro: L'Oise à Pontoise, temps gris
Camille Pissarro: Au bord de la rivière, Pontoise
Camille Pissarro: Bords de l'Oise a Pontoise
Camille Pissarro: The Pontoise washing area
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Even more than the view of the river - here the leisure-oriented water, there the industrial traffic route - Monet's work differs from Pissarro's in the role of the railroad. For Monet, the railroad takes on the status that Pissarro expresses in his river motifs - connection to the distance, industrialization and the dynamism of the times. Monet's railway bridges are always the main motif of the portrait, while Pissarro's always the river. As with his other pictures of this time, Pissarro does not focus on the technological motif, but remains true to the tradition of idyllic landscape painting. In Monet's picture, the Argenteuil railway bridge, created during the same period, the view of the structure is unobstructed and a steam train at full speed can be seen as a symbol of progress and an optimistic future. This element is either completely absent from Pissarro's work from this period or is only shown from a great distance. Railways play only a minor role in Pissarro's oeuvre. It was not until 1873 that he depicted a railway motif at Pontoise, in the same year that he discovered the factory motif for himself. It is obvious that Pissarro refused to use the railroad as a fast means of transport and preferred a more leisurely and, in his eyes, more humane way of getting around.
A representation of the railway is the picture La Route au bord du chemin de fer, effet de neige ( The road at the railway embankment in the snow ). Here, too, in contrast to Monet, the artist's focus is not on a dynamic train journey with smoking locomotives, but only on the route, elevated on a railway embankment and accompanied by a number of telegraph poles. He is not interested in the glorification of the railroad, he is interested in the changes in the premodern landscape through the new means of transport. Half of the picture is reserved for nature, the rural landscape and village life, the other half is dominated by the embankment. Two figures in the middle of the picture form the point of connection between these two worlds, the human world on the one hand and the mechanized world on the other, which inevitably leaves its mark on the first.
Instead of accepting the railway or even glorifying its technology, Pissarro depicts it in contrast to the slow, handcrafted cultural landscape that it threatens to replace. In his painting Bords de l'Oise, printemps (1873) he shows the course of the Oise. On the bank, a horse-drawn vehicle drives parallel to the river on the Route d'Auvers. In the background of the expansive landscape, it contrasts with a steaming train. The contrast between modern and traditional means of transport also forms the motif in his painting Environs de Sydenham Hill (1871) and in his drawing View from Upper Norwood .
Camille Pissarro: Environs de Sydenham Hill , 1871
Camille Pissarro: Bords de l'Oise, printemps , 1873
Camille Pissarro: La Route au bord du chemin de fer, effet de neige , 1873
This skeptical view of the railroad is also evident in The Pontoise Railway Bridge , especially when compared to Monet's The Argenteuil Railway Bridge . Pissarro moves the railway bridge into the background, while Monet glorifies it together with steam-emitting trains. Another reference to Pissarro's reservations about the railroad is the picture La Barrière du chemin de fer aux Pâtis, près Pontoise (1873, repainted in 1874). Here, too, the railway is painted without a train, the level crossing with the barrier alone symbolizes the restriction of the rural population shown in the form of a man and a woman who seem to be enclosed in the strict geometry of the barrier.
Claude Monet: The Argenteuil Railway Bridge , 1873
Camille Pissarro: La Barrière du chemin de fer aux Pâtis, près Pontoise , 1873/74
All of these works illustrate Pissarro's distrust of the railroad. In the field of tension between ship and rail traffic, which was controversially discussed in France, England and the United States in the 19th century, in contrast to Monet, he clearly positions himself on the side of the waterways. Impressively steaming, racing and magnificently depicted railways are not Pissarro's subject, he shows the landscape from a local perspective. The Pontoise Railway Bridge is a prototype of Pissarro's view of the river and the railway.
Further representation of the motif
Camille Pissarro , approx. 1882–1883
31 cm × 60.8 cm
Gouache with watercolors on silk
Ten years later, Pissarro takes up the motif for the design of a fan again. Using the painting technique of gouache with watercolors on silk, Pissarro has now apparently lost his distance from the railway. The bridge now carries a moving train and is represented on an equal footing with the elements of the harbor scenery with works and ships docked. The river landscape with trees on the banks has moved into the background, the central motif are entirely the industrial aspects of the view.
Provenance of the picture
The Pontoise railway bridge was first exhibited in the Georges Petit gallery in Paris and then in the Bernheim-Jeune gallery , also in Paris. On December 16, 1908, the picture was sold by a Monsieur Fromentin ; a further purchase by a Monsieur Humbert through the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot is documented on December 3, 1910. A Monsieur Blot acquired the painting from his possession . In January 1924 R. and C. Gerard from Paris went to the New York branch of Galerie Knoedler & Co. , which sold it to the art collector James Carstairs from Philadelphia in March of the same year . In October 1927, the Knoedler gallery bought the painting back and in February 1929 it came to the married couple Ruth S. and David M. Heymann from New York.
On May 16, 1986, the painting was auctioned at Christie's , New York. The buyer was the Alex Reid & Lefevre gallery from London. The property of the Acquavella Galleries from New York was auctioned again on May 14, 1997 at Christie's, at which a price of 2,587,500 US dollars was achieved. The painting is now in private hands.
literature
- Richard R. Brettell, Joachim Pissarro: Pissarro and Pontoise . The Painter in a Landscape . Yale University Press, New Haven, London 1990, ISBN 0-300-04336-8 , pp. 68 u. 69 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 69 .
- ^ A b Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 61 .
- ^ Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 63 .
- ^ Arnold Hauser : Social history of art and literature , pp. 166–225
- ^ A b Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 64 .
- ^ Bords de Rivière , 1871
- ↑ a b c Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 65 .
- ^ Richard R. Brettell: Pissarro and Pontoise . S. 67 .
- ↑ Sale offer at Christie's auction house