cursory glance at Gustave Caillebotte's Le Pont de l'Europe immediately catches the right-hand side's imposing iron girder as it begins its plunge diagonally into the background. Mimicking the backward motion are the lines created by the top of the railing and its shadow, both of which come from the lower right-hand corner. From the lower-left hand corner, another line demarking the road from the sidewalk mirrors the background driving action on the right and lastly, providing a neat horizontal cap across the top are the roofs of the faded buildings in the background.
t first, these lines in concert appear to merely create perspective - a skill all but the most novice of painters can accomplish. Yet on closer examination, the impossibility of the perspective illusion becomes apparent. The lines on the right made up of the girder and the railing, which at first appear to be parallel, are in fact actually converging, as if the roadbed of the street were rising in relation to the girder. This depiction is historically correct, the Rue de Rome, the name of the street in the painting, did indeed gradually rise within its iron girder frame. J. Kirk. T. Varnedoe in "Caillebotte's Pont de l'Europe: A New Slant" argues the perspective forcing nature of Caillebotte's painting serves more than to simply depict historical reality (Broude 11). The forced perspective instead works to thrust the solitary figure on the right forward and push the couple in the painting further back, thus creating a deep sense of isolation and loneliness. In considering the argument that Caillebotte's "urban strangers" are isolated in order to connect feminine clothing and female companionship, it is by using perspective effects as this that Caillebotte socially punish the man who wears simple clothing.
owever, Caillebotte's forced perspective arrangements have even been accused of being solely the reason for his isolation effects. Karen Wilkin, one such proponent, contends in her exhibition notes for the Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, "The much-discussed presumed 'alienation' and 'melancholy' of Caillebotte's pictures are functions of his careful perspectival plotting, which tends to isolate figures rendered in 'correct proportion'?" (Wilkin 51).
et other aspects such as clothing difference, juxtaposition of the figures on the painting, and posture also contribute to the sense of isolation in the painting. Both movement and its direction may also serve to isolate the "urban stranger". The flâneur and his companion are walking whereas the urban stranger is standing still. Still, in terms of overall effect, the strange way the painting falsely creates a skewed perspective is an important way in which Caillebotte makes his statement.