George Washington Bridge

Born in New Haven, New York, Sidney Wiggins moved to New York City to study with the American Realist painter Robert Henri. Like another of Henri’s students, Edward Hopper, Wiggins often took views of monumental infrastructure, namely bridges, as his subject. Here, the industrial sublimity of the bridge’s latticed structure dwarves the landscape on either side of the Hudson. In the foreground promenade, a strolling pair of dog-walkers, arms outstretched, echoes the span of the bridge in shorthand, decidedly human, terms.