Bridge at Poissy (Pêcheurs à ligne)

This surprising, naturalist painting by the renowned French academic-realist Ernst Meissonier depicts a man and a woman in small boat on the river Seine at Poissy, a small town about 15 miles northeast of Paris. The fashionably dressed figures, presumably members of the new urban class at leisure, are fishing in the shade of several trees on the bank. The man wears straw hat, his shirt sleeves casually rolled up, while the woman stands in the boat extending her pole over the water.