OIL PAINTING: The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil , 1873
Though Monet is the quintessential Impressionist, his series paintings exhibit an interest in perceptual and artistic processes generally associated with the Post-Impressionists. Depicting the same sites again and again at different times of day and under varying weather conditions, like The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, Monet emphasized how optical effects altered his perception of the world. The Post-Impressionists, including artists as diverse as Paul Cezanne,
Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac, did not exhibit together and were never a unified group, but they shared a commitment to exploring the mechanisms of artmaking.