Bridge at Courbevoie by Georges Seurat

What restfulness, what peace and quiet! We feel the night is about to fall, the boats are already at anchor. This is one of Seurat's outstanding paintings in medium-sized format.

It might just as well be titled "In Praise of the Vertical." A plumbline seems almost to have figured in the composition. Here is to be recollected what Humbert de Superville had written of the vertical: that it is the line of force, the line of authority and command. As against all this severity ( masts and standing figures), the twisted tree trunk in the foreground takes on the happy contrast of a female curve, which brings out everything else.

But there is no need to analyze a painting composed so clearly. It is a poem about the approaching night. This is late afternoon, the dazzling sky still reflected in the water where the men fishing have cast their lines, the silence broken only by the arrival of the last boat. Smoke is drifting around in the midst of this untroubled splendor.

Two preliminary drawings for this canvas are reproduced in Cesar de Hauke's book on Seurat's works. The first is a detail of the bridge, and the second is more like the painting, except that there is only one human figure.

The work shown here was formerly owned by Arsene Alexandre, one of Seurat's staunchest defenders.