On the Pont de l'Europe

The Pont de l’Europe, a massive iron bridge built between 1865 and 1869, provided easy access to the expanded Gare Saint-Lazare railway station. Vuillard depicts this quintessential symbol of Parisian modernity with a decorative design of crisscrossing railings. The pattern is reminiscent of the wallpaper and textiles in the artist’s paintings of interiors throughout the 1890s, such as those on view in the first two galleries of this exhibition. In his own witty and highly personal manner, Vuillard domesticized one of the capital’s most important landmarks and technologically modern feats.