In 1893, Monet obtained permission to dig a pond down at the end of his land and build a little bridge over it. He now set about creating the “water garden” that would be the almost exclusive subject of his paintings from the 1900s onwards. The closeness of this subject made it that much easier for him to repeat his theme and push ahead with his pictorial experiments. The Japanese Bridge series forms a surprising parenthesis in his work. The bridge motif, which first appears in his paintings in 1895, when it is handled in realistic fashion, begins to disappear behind the rhythm of the brushstrokes and the intensity of the colors, as it does here. In this panoramic format, a slender arch crossing the composition from one side to another constitutes the only distinctive element. It is overgrown with dense vegetation, which is rendered in fragmented brushstrokes that saturate the space. Structured by the areas of shadow and light, the work conveys an image of the artist’s subjective vision.