The Japanese Footbridge by Claude Monet

The Japanese Footbridge by Claude Monet

A bridge with no banks

The bridge runs straight across the top of the picture and off both edges, so we never see where it starts or ends. Below it is the pond, covered with lily pads in flat strokes of green, lilac and pink and spotted with white, pink and yellow flowers. Reeds and grasses crowd in from the sides, and at the back there is only a wall of foliage. There is no sky at all. Almost everything is green, in dozens of shades, and the bridge itself is a cool blue-green that sets it apart from the leaves around it.

A garden made after Japanese prints

Monet built the footbridge over the pond he had dug at Giverny in the 1890s, taking the idea from the Japanese woodblock prints he collected, which still hang in his house. In 1899 he made a series of paintings of the bridge from much the same viewpoint. He went on painting it for another twenty years; in the later pictures the bridge is heavy with wisteria and the colour turns hot and loose, until the bridge almost disappears into the paint.

Where it hangs

The painting has been in the National Gallery of Art in Washington since 1992 and measures 81.3 by 101.6 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 4,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 26 inches on its longest side.

Sources: National Gallery of Art, Washington · Wikidata Q12858617 · Wikimedia Commons