Zaandam, Little Bridge (1871) — Claude Monet Postcard

A small wooden footbridge crosses a Dutch canal in Zaandam under a wide, cool northern sky — a quiet 1871 canvas from the summer Monet spent in the Netherlands after fleeing the Franco-Prussian war. The water is brushy and grey-green; the colour comes from the houses on the far bank and the reflections sliced by a small boat. It is the painter's least Mediterranean register, all silver and grey-blue, and reads as a postcard from a country he had only just discovered. A travelling, almost epistolary card — well suited to a slow letter or to anyone who collects canal cities. Continue with the Oscar-Claude Monet collection or the wider painting art postcards shelf.