Gustave Caillebotte’s Le Pont de l’Europe is a classic example of French Impressionism. In it, the artist represents a Paris street scene: a striding man and a strolling woman; a workman/artisan looking over the bridge at the Saint-Lazare train station; and a jaunty dog moving with a purposeful, self-directed gait. (Most critics have assumed that the dog’s person is trailing after him, similarly to the artist’s painting Richard Gallo with His Dog Dick at Petit Gennevilliers.) The dog’s presence in the painting’s foreground in freezeframe stillness has a pre-cinematic effect, and the way his shadow parallels the shadow cast by the bridge’s girders reinforces its perspective.
via Whisker Therapy