Gust of Wind on a Bridge over the Seine

This painting is like a snapshot taken on the Pont des Saints-Pères in Paris, which in the meantime has been replaced by the Pont du Carrousel. A strong gust of wind has whipped the manes of the team of horses pulling an omnibus, threatening to blow away one woman’s hat, while lifting the coat skirt of another, whose fur boa is whirling in the wind. The cool color tones evoke a cold autumn day. Louis Anquetin emphasizes the strength of the wind in the curving, arabesque lines that take on a life of their own. For the decorative contours of color surfaces—the style of which Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin and the Nabis were to adopt from Anquetin— the poet Edouard Dujardin coined the term Cloisonnism, referring to the medieval technique of enameling called cloisonné, which separates fields of color by using thin metal bands. Anquetin’s graphically abbreviated surface treatment, the daring detail chosen for the painting, and the staggered elements arranged in parallel picture levels are proof of his being strongly influenced by Japanese color woodcuts. His choice of subject matter supports this, as figures depicted in wind and rain was a popular theme of Japanese prints.