The canvas is lined. UV examination reveals some pin-sized spots and fine lines of retouching to the sky. Some further spots of fluorescence in the lower half of the composition and to the lower right corner. Scattered fine lines of craquelure. This work is in overall good condition.
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The present work is a charming and highly atmospheric depiction of the river Seine, probably near Chatou, a small town located just north-west of Paris. Vlaminck, who moved to this region at the age of sixteen, was deeply attached to the local landscape which he strove to render in his paintings with the utmost intensity. It was at Chatou that one of the critical partnerships at the core of the Fauve movement began with the chance meeting of Vlaminck and André Derain in June 1900. When their outbound train derailed shortly after leaving Paris, the two artists "struck up a conversation while walking the rest of the way to Chatou, where they both lived. It turned out that they both painted, and... they agreed to meet the next day under the Pont de Chatou... with their canvases. So it was, as Vlaminck later said in his typically ocular manner, that the 'School of Chatou was created'" (John Klein, The Fauve Landscape (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, p. 123).

Subsequently, Vlaminck and Derain shared a studio, and over the following years regularly painted together, often depicting the same views. Vlaminck rarely left this region during his Fauvist years, preferring its surroundings along the Seine over the landscapes of the south of France, favored by Matisse, Derain and Braque. He drew inspiration for most of his early landscapes from this region, many of them, including the present work, characterized by the red-tiled roofs typical of the surrounding villages. Le Pont exemplifies an important stylistic shift in Vlaminck's painting: whilst still displaying a gestural technique that acknowledged his Fauve period, the now more pared down, predominantly blue palette heralds Vlaminck's "Cézannesque" period that would dominate in the years to come. Discussing Vlaminck’s works from this transitional period, John Elderfield has described “the emphatic pictorial openness and expansive flatness characteristic of the second Fauve style” (John Elderfield in Fauvism and its Affinities (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976, p. 71).