I’ve always loved rivers and bridges, and of course they have inspired many artists in the past. Water and bridges with buildings or landscapes around them are inexhaustible sources of pictorial effects, and a rich mirror for mood and ideas. At times bustling ports, at times silent hinterlands, images of rivers have found their way into homes and art galleries all over the world.
Many of them are well known, from Vermeer to Canaletto, Turner, Constable, and later on the Hudson River landscapes. And New York City has its own tradition of cityscapes filled with the same energy as the city itself, chaotic, imposing, brightly colored, new but also stark, dark, overpowering and derelict.
But if I were to choose just one of them, it would be Vermeer’s famous View of Delft, which seems to have everything: sunspeckled buildings rising behind opaque shadows, mirrors of water reflecting cubes of houses, blue skies and storm clouds about to burst.
Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft (1660-1661)
Oil on canvas, 98.5 cm × 117.5 cm (38.8 in × 46.3 in)
Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands