×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

(OP)
Was ( or is ) this a real bridge?

I bought this print of an oil painting  at a garage sale. It shows a stone arch bridge with an apartment building over the pier and women washing clothes in the river.
An engineer (?) standing under the arch on the river bank appears to be looking at the underside of the bridge. He is wearing a 3 corner hat .
The bridge appears to be Roman and maybe in southern Spain or Italy.
There are no artist initials or signatures, and the back is blank. A Web search found similiar style paintings by Dutch parinters in the 1800's but nothing close.

Just wondering ..was this a real bridge?

( I've tried to attach a photo )
 

RE: Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

The light on the near face seems to have reflected off a much larger structure out of the picture to the left... perhaps a replacement for this bridge, which at the right of the picture especially, has fallen into disarray.

The apartment building was clearly constructed as a tollhouse.

The hole clear through the bridge just under the deck is odd; I thought arch bridges were normally filled with rubble to stablize the arch and support the deck.


The arch's geometry is too imperfect for a standing bridge.

The thinness of the bridge over the keystone is implausible.

It's possible that it represents a real bridge, but must have been drawn from memory and imagination.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

Looks like a real one to me.

Antiques roadshow candidate.

RE: Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

Probably a real painting, but painters can take some license between real life and imagination.

The thickness over the keystone is really too small to be true, but it made it possible to have the light for the area under the bridge. the hole must have been created for effect.

It certainly must have been old when constructed, since the image is probably from the 1700's.

Wouldn't have been nice to have digital cameras in that time period? - We would all know more!!

Dick

RE: Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

It looks like a good restoration candidate, I mean the bridge.  When does it go out for bid?

RE: Old oil painting of arched bridge: was this a real bridge?

Here is aa link to a photo of "The Tiffany Jewel" a five span masonry arch railroad bridge built in Tiffany, WI around the time of the Civil War. You can see that the arches were reinforce (1932) by shot-crete over rebar to accomodate the new heavier locomotives. But also notice how thin the origial stone arches were.  This is a beautiful bridge and I was able to get a copy of the railroads construction drawings for the upgrade, including the graphical solution for the arch stresses. I did not take the picture shown.

http://bridgehunter.com/wi/rock/tiffany-stone/
 

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources