Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières)1887
This painting is set on the river Seine at the Clichy Bridge near Asnières, a suburb north of Paris where Van Gogh painted on several occasions with his friend and fellow artist Paul Signac. More about this work
About this work
This painting is set on the river Seine at the Clichy Bridge near Asnières, a suburb north of Paris where Van Gogh painted on several occasions with his friend and fellow artist Paul Signac. Van Gogh was inspired by a technique Signac innovated called divisionism, in which, using science-based color theory, he painted distinct strokes of different colors of paint next to each other to make each color more luminous.
Text from the Art Institute of Chicago.
What you’re looking at
Painting in short strokes of pale blue, green, white, yellow, and pink, of a fisherman in one of two small boats on a river, a tree-lined bank and a bridge in the background.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Vincent van Gogh
Dutch, 1853–1890 · Born in Zundert; died in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and lay preacher before he turned to art in 1880, at twenty-seven. His early pictures of Dutch peasants are dark and heavy; in Paris from 1886 he met the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, and his palette brightened. In Arles in 1888–89 he painted with intense colour and thick, directional strokes, and he worked on at the asylum in Saint-Rémy and finally at Auvers-sur-Oise. The Poet’s Garden belongs to a group made to decorate Gauguin’s room in the Yellow House.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1965.1169
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
