One of the early American Impressionists, Theodore Robinson attended the National Academy of Design in New York. He continued his studies at one of the principal ateliers of Paris, that of Carolus-Duran, from 1876 to 1879, and at the École des Beaux Arts. From 1884 to 1892 he divided his time between the United States and France, spending the last four years of his life in America.
Robinson met Claude Monet at Giverny in 1888 and worked closely with him there. The Bridge at Giverny is a product of this crucial period. It depicts the bridge that spans the Seine between Giverny and the town of Vernon. The compressed foreground of cropped, interlacing trees—a popular compositional format used by Monet and other French Impressionists—provides a shaded screen through which to view the diagonal expanse of the bridge, a solid force amidst daubs of sunny foliage and shimmering water.