In the summer of 1999, Tom spent four months in Paris painting the 36 bridges on the Seine. With his paints, easel and a canvas, he worked his way along the river, beginning in the east where he was living and heading west.
Along the way he met people, police and strange situations and each bridge ended up a story as well as a painting.
The cafes were full of Gauloise smoke and empty of phones and gadgets. No Euros. Just French Francs. The pavements were free of scooters and ebikes but had quite a lot of dog poo…
Looking east towards the Pont National, this painting was done quickly whilst the sun was rising. Painting at the beginning or end of the day the light changes so quickly you have to work very fast. So, deep in concentration, I didn't notice the police arrive until I was surrounded by about nine of them.
I was surprised, as a few minutes earlier I had been alone on an industrial stretch of the river bank. I was questioned about whether I had seen anyone jump from the bridge. No, I hadn't. Apparently there had been reports that someone had jumped (or was maybe pushed?) into the river. Luckily I had almost finished the painting by the time the police arrived, as after ten minutes of talking bad French the light had changed completely.
The Pont Alexandre III is the oldest metal bridge in Paris and was built for the 1890 exposition. The view beneath it offers an impressive geometry of spans and girders and this is the angle I chose to paint. As the perspective was quite complex, the painting took two mornings to complete and meant that my viewing angle on the second morning had to be identical to the first.
So it was unfortunate that there was a man sleeping on the pavement at the exact spot when I returned for second morning.
He was spread out exactly where my easel needed to go and I needed to stand. I tried a little to the right of him and a little to the left, but the view looked completely different. The man was fast asleep and the light was changing fast. I needed to get on with the painting. There was no option but to carefully place the easel OVER him, one tripod leg by his elbow, another behind his knee and the third behind his head. As long as he didn't move I'd be fine...
I moved silently setting out my paints and got down to work. I was making good progress and the man was sleeping soundly and not moving at all when a family of German tourists passed by and stopped to see what I was doing. They began asking me questions...
Our voices woke up the sleeping man. He wasn't impressed at being woken up by German and English and finding himself beneath a painting easel. He quickly got up and moved off. I felt guilty and continued painting...
The bridge next to this one was covered in scaffolding (erected by the Gustave Eiffel company that is still in business). Whilst I was painting, a workman fell off the scaffolding. He was fished out of the water by three men in a boat.
This is the bridge near the spot where Princess Diana had died two years previously in 1997. After finishing the painting, I walked to the Metro and passed the mouth of the tunnel where the accident happened. Cars were speeding fast in and out of the tunnel and in between the lanes was a tottering line of tourists moving in and out of the tunnel along the narrow raised walkway that divides the traffic. A strange and dangerous tourist destination.
A display on the Eiffel Tower counted down the last days of the year 1999 and the millenium.
The day I painted this there were 130 days left of the year, making the date Monday August 23rd
Like with Hokusai’s ‘36 Views of Mount Fuji’, there actually ended up being more that 36 paintings of the bridges of Paris (Hokusai put 46 prints in the first publication). The Pont Neuf is in two pieces both attached to the Isle St.Louis. So is this to be counted as one bridge or two bridges? Deep conundrums such as this could be dwelled on at length and disturb one’s sleep.
This painting was painted on Bastille Day July 14th. It was extremely windy and building up a storm. I had to hold on to the easel with one hand to stop it and the painting flying away. The conditions meant this painting is quite ‘loose’, ‘expressive’…
This was the first bridge I painted in the series. It was exciting to begin this project and see where it would end up…
For a few months someone we knew let us stay in their antique studio flat on the Quai Voltaire opposite the Louvre.
It was a very privelaged and special location - Ingres’ old studio was next door and below was an elderly Russian lady. All smiles on the stairs when she wanted help carrying her shopping up, she gave piano lessons in the day and banged on our floor / her cieling in the evening with a broom stick.
The creaking of our old parquet floor apparently disturbed her and she wanted to let us know. After 8.00pm we had to walk a special route across the floor that avoided the creaky parquet that became like crocodiles in pavement cracks. We could put weight only on the few wooden bricks that didn’t creak. It was a leap, leap, stagger, leap to the bathroom... Very unrelaxing after a while....AND we had to put up with all the repetitive piano playing of her pupils during the day AND we were told not to dry our laundry out of the windows as it lowered the tone of the courtyard.
Still... a great location.