Henri Rousseau – View of the Bridge at Sèvres

View of the Bridge at Sèvres – a hand-painted reproduction

A grey sky fills the upper half of the scene and carries three flying machines. At the
upper left is a pale biplane with thin ribbed wings, a box structure ahead of it and a box
tail behind, with a dark seated shape between the wings. At the top centre hangs a dark grey
spherical balloon with a small dark basket. At the upper right floats a large orange elongated
airship with fins at its left end, a long rail beneath the hull, a small gondola carrying two
dark figures, and trailing lines. At the left a tall red-brown chimney rises out of autumn
foliage in orange, gold and green. Below it, moored at the left bank, a broad boat with a
black hull carries a large white deckhouse under a pale pitched roof, pierced by two small
dark diamond windows; a low pale green shed stands behind it. Across the centre runs a long
pale stone bridge of many arches. Behind its right end cluster white houses with red and
orange roofs and chimneys, and beside them a white building with a dark doorway under a red
roof, a pale stair against it. Down the right edge stands a row of tall dark green poplars,
and a pale quay with a green verge runs to the lower right corner. Behind everything a wooded
hill in autumn colour carries a few white red-roofed houses, a dark chimney and dark upright
trees. A small orange shape floats mid-river below the bridge. At the lower left, on the dark
bank, is a pale signature, Henri Rousseau.

Three machines in one sky

This is the most crowded sky on this shelf: a biplane, a balloon and an airship at once,
each painted with the same calm precision as the bridge beneath them. The painter does not
rank them by importance and puts none of them at the centre. What they were we do not claim –
the record says nothing about any of them, and the shapes alone cannot carry it. For the same
meeting of river and machine in a quieter version, see Quai d’Ivry, where a single airship floats
above a suburb.

The bridge that holds the scene together

Under that busy sky lies a very quiet horizontal: a long stone bridge of even arches that
cuts the scene in half and separates the autumn hill from the open water. The same device, a
bridge as the calm axis between sky and river, appears in View of the Clichy Bridge at Asnières and in View of the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadéro. Together they show
how the painter sets new technology into a landscape without letting the landscape become
restless because of it.

What it means on the wall

The original measures 81 cm x 100 cm and is among the larger works in this group. Because
the flying machines are small and set high, they are the first things to disappear at small
sizes; past a metre in width all three separate clearly from the sky, and so do the diamond
windows on the deckhouse. We do not reproduce canvases at the original measurement; you
choose the size for your wall. For the opposite case, an upright, enclosed scene with no sky
in it, see Toll Gate.

How a hand-painted reproduction is made

Every canvas is painted by hand in oils, to order, in the size you choose. The painter
works from a high-resolution photograph of the original, layer by layer, so that the ribs of
the biplane’s wings, the gondola under the airship and the diamond windows on the white
deckhouse stay legible at smaller sizes too. Because this is hand work, two canvases of the
same size always differ slightly; that is not a fault but the difference between a painting
and a print. Prices on this page start at 155 EUR for the smallest size.