Where to Build a Bridge

Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect (Effet de Soleil)
Claude Monet (French)
1903

Students will examine the artistic characteristics of Waterloo Bridge, explain the significance of bridges and how they have been used across time and cultures, and explore how bridges could be built to enhance their school through an “engineer walk” discussion, drawing, and writing.

Intended Age Group
Elementary (grades K-5)
Standards Area
Social Studies
Lesson Length
One 50 minute lesson
Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • examine the artistic characteristics of Waterloo Bridge;
  • explain the significance of bridges across time and cultures; and
  • determine where and how a bridge could enhance their school and larger community.

Lesson

  1. Display Waterloo Bridge and invite students to look carefully and share what they observe. Prompt them with the following questions: What do you notice about the painting? What colors do you see? What adjectives would you use to describe the painting? How does the painting make you feel? What types of structures and objects do you recognize? Describe the bridge in the painting. Is the bridge an important part of the painting? What makes you think that?
  2. Share with students that this painting is called Waterloo Bridge and was painted by Claude Monet in 1903. Monet painted this painting from the window of his hotel room in London, England. Ask students: Why do you think Monet would have chosen to paint this bridge? Do any of you see bridges from your bedroom window? Your school’s window? Where do you see bridges?
  3. Read aloud Bridges Are to Cross, noting all the different reasons people build bridges. As a class, make a list of different reasons people use bridges today, throughout history, and across cultures.
  4. Look back to Waterloo Bridge and establish how the bridge is being used. Is the bridge being used for travel? What kind of travel? In what ways does it allow for travel in the water below? Display a photo of Waterloo Bridge and discuss the structure. (You can find a number of photographs of the bridge via an online image search.) How does its structure compare to the bridges in the book? Why would this type of bridge be built?
  5. Invite students to put on their “science thinking caps” in preparation for an “engineer walk” around the school and playground. As you are walking, encourage students to look for different places around the school where bridges could help with passage, moving things, etc. Remind students to be creative and think about all the possible ways your school could use bridges. Should the principal have her own bridge to walk from her office to the playground like emperors in the book? Should your school have a moat with a drawbridge?
  6. When you return to the classroom, invite students to create a drawing of a bridge they believe should be built and the place at school where it could be located. Students should write an explanation of the purpose that the bridge would serve in the school and why it would be helpful.
  7. As a class, encourage students to share their school bridges and why they would be useful. Discuss how your larger community (town, city, state) uses bridges or in what ways they could use bridges.

Materials

  • Lined/unlined paper and pen/pencil/art supplies for each student
  • Bridges Are to Cross by Philemon Sturges and Giles Laroche (Puffin, 2000)
  • Chart paper or (interactive) whiteboard
  • Internet access and projection capabilities
  • About the Art section on Waterloo Bridge
  • One color copy of the painting for every four students, or the ability to project the image onto a wall or screen

Standards

CO Standards
  • Social Studies
    • History
    • Geography
  • Analyze historical sources using tools of a historian
  • Understand people and their relationship with geography and their environment
  • Visual Arts
    • Observe and Learn to Comprehend
  • Language Arts
    • Oral Expression and Listening
    • Research and Reasoning
    • Reading for All Purposes
21st Century Skills
  • Collaboration
  • Critical Thinking & Reasoning
  • Information Literacy
  • Invention

Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect (Effet de Soleil)

1903
Artist
Claude Monet, French, 1840-1926
Born: Paris, France
About the Artist

The most widely known French Impressionist and leader of that movement, Claude Monet [moe-NAY] was born in Paris and grew up on the Normandy coast. His father was a wholesale grocer, and after his mother died when he was 17, an aunt encouraged him in his efforts to become an artist. With a local reputation as a caricaturist, he attracted the interest of landscape painter Eugene Boudin [boh-DAN], who introduced the young artist to plein-air painting. Plein-air is French for “open air” and refers to paintings created outdoors.

In the 1860s, Monet joined a group of young artists who began to challenge the rules for making good paintings. They had so much trouble getting their work exhibited that they created their own independent exhibition, which yielded only ridicule and a sarcastic label for the group of artists. That label—derived from Monet’s painting, Impression, Sunrise of 1874—stuck, and produced the moniker of “Impressionists” for the group. Impressionists were initially criticized for their unworthy subjects, unrealistic colors, garish color combinations, and loose, seemingly unfinished brushwork.

Like many other Impressionists, Monet had little success in his early years. He most often chose to paint landscapes and leisure activities—everyday activities of modern Paris that were considered to be unworthy subjects for art, compared to the highly respected religious and mythological subjects. With his paintings, Monet strove to capture a fleeting moment by rendering the nuances of light and color. He wanted to depict the feeling or sensation of a scene, rather than the objects within the composition. As public opinion of Impressionism began to turn in the mid-1880s, Monet’s paintings began to sell well, and by the turn of the century, he was one of the world’s wealthiest artists.

What Inspired It

"I so love London! But I love it only in winter. It’s nice in summer with its parks, but nothing like it is in winter with the fog, for without the fog London wouldn’t be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth. Those massive, regular blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak." -Monet

The constantly changing light and atmospheric effects of the fog in London inspired Monet to proclaim, “No country could be more extraordinary for a painter.” Painting from the balcony of his suite at the Savoy Hotel on the Thames [tehms] River, Monet could hardly keep up with the shifting conditions. As he worked, he kept all the paintings he’d begun (sometimes dozens) close at hand. As the light changed, he’d switch out the canvas he was working on for another, frantically trying to find the one that best matched what he was currently seeing. He wrote his Paris dealer, “I can’t send you a single canvas, because, for the work I am doing, it is indispensable to have all of them before my eyes.” Monet brought the unfinished canvases back home and spent years reworking them in his studio. He made a total of 41 paintings of Waterloo Bridge.

Details

Modern London

Like many Impressionists, Monet was drawn to scenes and elements of everyday life, so it’s not surprising that he was interested in the modern parts of London. On the river we see commercial shipping boats. Across the bridge we see the smokestacks of smog-producing factories.

Pollution

In winter, industrial smokestacks, commercial boats, and chimneys everywhere made great clouds of coal smoke that mixed with mist from the river. The resulting smog was like a veil over the city that changed colors with the light. Most people thought it quite dirty, smelly, and disgusting, but Monet found it wonderful.

Colors in the Haze

While other painters would depict London as a drab, gray, urban space, Monet observed how the fog changed colors depending on the light. Notice the lilac, pink, and pale olive colors in the mists. As Monet explained, “The fog in London assumes all sorts of colors; there are black, brown, yellow, green, purple fogs, and the interest in painting is to get the objects as seen through these fogs.”

Layers of Paint

Monet’s first layers of paint were very thin, with thicker areas developing as he continued to add many layers and rework the surface.

Movement

Although the scene may initially appear very still, notice all the elements suggesting movement: smoke pouring from the smokestacks, clouds, boats, traffic on the bridge, the river.

No Black

Monet felt that black had a dulling effect, so instead of black, he used a color’s complement to darken an area. For example, to darken something blue, he would add some orange or red.

Repeated Shapes

Repeated shapes—the circular puffs of smoke from the factories and boats, and the round arches of the Waterloo Bridge—are evidence that Monet was selective in what he included and where he placed it.

Waterloo Bridge

When Waterloo Bridge opened in 1817 it acted as a social division. The elegant north side of the Thames River, where the Savoy Hotel was located, was populated with large buildings and public gardens. The south side, in contrast, was the home of industry. The bridge that Monet painted was torn down in 1934 because of unstable foundations and traffic bottlenecks. The new bridge opened in 1945 and remains in use today.

Funding for object education resources provided by a grant from the Morgridge Family Foundation. Additional funding provided by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment for Education Programs, and Xcel Energy Foundation. We thank our colleagues at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education.

The images on this page are intended for classroom use only and may not be reproduced for other reasons without the permission of the Denver Art Museum. This object may not currently be on display at the museum.