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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Armand Guillaumin

The Bridge of the Archbishop and the Apse of Notre-Dame

ca. 1880
Oil on canvas.
54 x 65 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1994.12
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

The Archbishop's palace, which rose on the river bank near the cathedral, was destroyed in 1831. Only the bridge kept its name. Formed by three stone arches, it was opened in 1828, the day of the feast of Charles X. This bridge had the characteristic of opening onto the entrance to the Morgue, transferred in 1864 to its north end, where it remained until 1923. The bodies of those who had died in prison, in the street, or had drowned, were taken there.

Guillaumin had occupied, Daubigny's former studio, at 13 Quai d'Anjou, on the Ile Saint Louis. From there, he painted the banks of the Seine, the bridges of the Ile de la Cité, and various oils representing the cathedral of Notre Dame.

At the end of 1869, Guillaumin had obtained a hard night job at the Paris City Council, which meant he had three days to paint. In 1903 he recalled those years: «for ten years I led the life of a convict, spending three nights a week at the service of the Paris City Council, while still working during the day». He would set off with just one black coffee to warm him up, his paints and one or two canvases.

On 2 July 1876, he told Dr Gachet: «As from next Monday and for the next four weeks, you will find me here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If you should come next Monday, old Cézanne told me he will drop by around 6 o'clock to see my mother and he will have dinner with us».

Cézanne and Guillaumin used to work together at the Parc d´Issy and at Chatillon. Some of the works painted then undoubtedly completed Guillaumin's contribution to the 1880 Salon.

Those were the years when the studio at 13 Quai d'Anjou was the scene of lively meetings, of discussions on the subject of painting and on the exhibitions to be prepared, of happy encounters, particularly with Pissarro and Cézanne, with doctor Gachet who welcomed them in Auvers and offered them the opportunity of discovering engraving, with Eugène Murer, his childhood friend from Moulins, to whom he introduced his friends, and whose little restaurant ensured that they got a proper meal during the days «in the galleys». At the 1880 Salon, Guillaumin presented 18 oils and a few pastels depicting the suburbs of Paris, Fontenay, Chatillon, the Port of Austerlitz close to which lived one of his brothers, whose address he had given to be included in the catalogue. Regarding the paintings of Paris, apart from the one representing the Pont-Marie, their titles do not seem to indicate that the Bridge of the Archbishop's Palace was depicted in any of them. Zola pointed out that Pissarro, Sisley and Guillaumin set out to render aspects of the nature around Paris in the true light, without the slightest unexpected colour effect (Le Voltaire, 19 June).

The painting from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection is constructed around a simple composition, based on the oblique line of the river bank leading to the background marked by the horizontal line of the bridge, the same importance being given to the sky as to the rest of the painting. The signature, a G with the large loop in which are included the letters «UI», is characteristic of the beginning of the 1880s.

Like Pissarro and Cézanne, in that period Guillaumin was interested in passers-by and people strolling along the banks. In the previous series he had preferred to represent the workers unloading the barges, those sifting sand and the little coal thieves.

It would be interesting to compare this painting with that of the Blot collection which shows a variation in size (60 x 81 cm), in the number and place of the characters and in a boat crossing the Seine; the artist placed his easel more to the left and further back with regard to the bridge. It seems that both paintings belong to the same period.

The composition is sober and dense, the brushstrokes are solid, rapid, overlapping different tones, which reduces the effect of transparency of the water and intensifies the impression of colour density; the sky is painted with nervous brushstrokes, combined with large rough sweeping strokes which convey the clouds racing by and the vagaries imposed on them by the wind.

Jacqueline Derbanne
 

19th Century19th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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The Bridge of the Archbishop´s Palace and the Apse of Notre-Dame, Paris

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The Bridge of the Archbishop and the Apse of Notre-Dame, c. 1880
The Bridge of the Archbishop and the Apse of Notre-Dame
Armand Guillaumin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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The Bridge of the Archbishop and the Apse of Notre-Dame, c. 1880
The Bridge of the Archbishop and the Apse of Notre-Dame
Armand Guillaumin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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