Bridge at Chatou

c. 1875

Renoir placed his easel on lush pastoral land in Chatou, a village about nine miles west of Paris, yet chose to paint the town’s nondescript buildings rather than the surrounding landscape. The focus of the canvas is the brilliant blue of the river and the contrasting yellow of the sunlit bridge, its reflection blurred by the choppy surface of the suburban waterway.

Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	20 1/8 x 25 3/4 in. (51.1 x 65.4 cm) Frame: 28 1/2 x 34 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (72.4 x 87.6 x 11.4 cm)
Object Number	1955.591
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark, 1925
Status	On View

Image Caption

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bridge at Chatou, c. 1875, Oil on canvas. The Clark Art Institute, 1955.591.

Bibliography

Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

Provenance

Ernest Hoschedé, Paris, probably bought from the artist (until 1878, his sale, Drouot, Paris, 6 June 1878, no. 74, sold to de Bellio); Georges de Bellio, Paris (1878–d. 1894); Victorine and Eugène Donop de Monchy, Paris, de Bellio’s daughter and son-in-law, by descent (from 1894); Georges Hoentschel, Paris (d. 1915); [Knoedler, Paris, sold to Clark, 13 Oct. 1925]; Robert Sterling Clark (1925–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.