Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather

Rain glistens on an iron bridge, smoke drifts from the boats, crowds and carts hurry across, and workers toil on the quay. From his hotel window in Rouen, Pissarro found the modern city so spirited, so alive.

The story behind the painting

Pissarro painted this picture in 1896 in Rouen, where he went to paint the industrial modernity of the city; he had already made a series there in 1883. From January to April 1896 he stayed at the Hôtel de Paris, in a room overlooking the Seine, and painted the view from that window. The subject is the Pont Boieldieu, an iron bridge completed in 1885, with the Gare d'Orléans station and the Place Carnot across the river. He painted the same view many times, in different light and weather, choosing on purpose the busy industrial part of town.

What to look for

Pissarro described it himself in a letter that year: the bridge near the Place de la Bourse with the effects of rain, crowds of people coming and going, smoke from the boats, quays with cranes, workers in the foreground, all in grey colours glistening in the rain. Look for the iron span crossing the picture, the haze in the distance and the small figures moving along the embankment. In style, the painting marks a return to Impressionism after a decade of experiments with Post-Impressionism and Pointillism.

Meaning and intent

The painting shows Pissarro's wish to move beyond traditional landscapes of green countryside. His Rouen series looks instead at the bustle of the modern city: iron, steam, traffic and labour. What particularly interested him, he wrote, was the iron bridge in wet weather with all the vehicles, pedestrians, workers on the embankment, boats, smoke and distant haze, so spirited, so alive. The grey rain does not dull the scene; it unifies it, turning an industrial quay into a living, shimmering whole. The Rouen pictures were followed by his series of urban Paris.

Legacy

Reuben Wells Leonard left the painting to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto on his death in 1937. It is one of six Pissarros on public display in Canada, two others also at the AGO, and the rest at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Pissarro painted the bridge from the same angle in a foggy sunset, a picture now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. He returned to the city from September to November 1896 and painted it again from another hotel balcony.