Henri Rousseau – View of the Clichy Bridge at Asnières

View of the Clichy Bridge at Asnières, c. 1900–1902

A river, a bridge and a balloon

The canvas is upright, but the scene it holds is wide open. The lower half is taken by a
pale green-blue river, and across the middle an iron bridge is thrown, with a dark vehicle
crossing it. Above all of that lies a grey-green sky with a single hot-air balloon hanging
in it. Those three things – the bridge, the tug and the balloon – are what place the scene
in its own moment: this is not countryside but a suburb that has just been modernised.

The tug and the sailing boats

In the lower left corner lies a boat with a red hull and a black funnel – a river tug,
painted larger than anything else on the water. To its right are two small sailing boats
with white triangular sails. The difference in size between them and the tug is greater than
it would be in life, which is usual with Rousseau: he paints things at the size their
importance in the scene deserves, not the size their distance would give them.

The bank and the houses

Along the left bank stand houses with red tiled roofs and a taller pale building with
several rows of windows. Bare trees with thin branches grow in front of them. On the right
rises a dense band of trees in autumn ochre – the warmest colour on the canvas and the only
place where colour really gathers. Against it everything else is cool: the water, the sky,
the bridge.

Why these particular things

The Barnes Foundation’s record suggests that Rousseau painted this view as a submission
for the competition to decorate the new town hall at Asnières, a suburb eight kilometres
from the centre of Paris. The rules of the competition called for local landscapes showing
Asnières as a modern place for healthy leisure. The iron bridge, the tug and the balloon
answer the demand for modernity, and the sailing boats stand for active relaxation. The
museum itself puts this forward cautiously, so we give it as the museum’s suggestion and not
as a fact.

Water without waves

The river is painted as one even pale plane with soft horizontal passages, without waves
and without a wake behind the tug. Because of that the scene does not read as a record of
movement but as a held image – the boats sit on the water like cut-out shapes. Comparably
still water can be found in The Canal, and a river bank in The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre.

The museum and the record

The original is held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia under accession number
BF861, under the title View of Clichy Bridge at Asnières, in French
Vue du pont Clichy à Asnières. The museum records it as oil on canvas measuring
44 x 40 cm and dates it to about 1900-1902. Another suburban view in our series is Outskirts of Paris,
and an evening scene is A Carnival Evening.

How we make this canvas

We make the picture as a hand-painted oil on canvas reproduction, to order and in the size
you choose. In this subject the horizontal of the bridge is decisive: if it tilts even
slightly the whole scene tips with it, because the bridge is the only long straight line on
the canvas. So it is painted early and everything else is set against it. Because the work
is done by hand, every copy differs a little from the last. The canvas is stretched on a
wooden frame and delivered ready to hang. Other works by this painter are in the Henri Rousseau gallery.