The Roebling Bridge -- An Architectural Wonder in Cincinnati

"Cincinnati: Roebling"
24" x 36" acrylic on canvas
Artist: Dale Wolf
This stunning bridge, built in 1856, spans the Ohio River at Cincinnati.
My painting focuses on the south bridge tower, with the dramatic sweep of the suspended bridge across the Ohio river toward the Cincinnati skyline. I wanted to capture the architectural beauty of this iconic bridge without getting tied up in photographic realism.
"Cincinnati: Roebling" was an award winner in The Artists Magazine 2017 Annual Competition, from among 5,700 entries.
This bridge is probably the most photographed and painted figure in all of Cincinnati. My first task was to get a composition that was a bit different than many of the paintings local artists have created of this bridge.
I photographed the bridge from every angle I could find. I went under the bridge and shot up. I went to both ends and shot into the steel road. The view I finally selected was from the Kentucky side looking out across the Ohio.
I did a "plein air" study to work out the perspective, choosing not to show the actual river but to capture the sweep of the bridge hanging over the river. I sat near the statue of John Roebling while painting this study. I hoped my final piece would make him proud.
My initial concept was to paint a cloudless sky to keep the focus on the tower. But Ken Buck suggested clouds would actually work to pull the bridge visually forward. He was dead right. They create more dimension in the final work.
There is a tremendous amount of detain in the tower architecture and I wanted to be as true as possible to Roebling but still produce an artistic painting. The real fun in creating this painting was finding the muted mid-tones of green and blue shades of browns in the tower stones. I then applied warm orange highlights to capture the sparkle of sunlight across the structure.

I enjoyed working the colors in the tower. The crown of the tower is a remarkable display of architectural design that marked Roebling's two most famous bridges: Cincinnati and later, the Brooklyn Bridge. The suspension cables pass through the two towers to create the sweep across the river. The constant challenge was in choosing which architectural details to show and which to ignore, especially in the crown.
Once I was fairly far along with the tower and ready to tackle the bridge ironworks, I went back to the bridge and took another batch of photos of the details in the structural work. Roebling's attention to the engineering of the bridge was as masterful as his sense of design in the towers. I wanted to capture some of this so that my artistic rendering would be as accurate as possible. Using a pair of small sable brushes, I constructed my impression of the bridge ironwork.
I did the cables last. Partly out of fear of messing up the entire painting because they had to be painted over parts of the tower and across the sky. For the cables, I first positioned them using a watercolor pencil. I then applied the acrylic along the pencil lines. In places the acrylic paint covered the pencil lines and at other places the acrylic blended into the watercolor pencil line to create a nice roundness to the cables. I took a deep breath once the cables were in place.
Last came the Cincinnati skyline.
It takes courage to be an artist, and this project took all I had.
A bit more on the history of the Roebling Bridge:
Construction of the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge (later renamed the John Roebling Bridge) began in 1856. It took over a decade to complete, interrupted by financial shortages and the Civil War, during which the city and the unfinished bridge were under threat of attack. The 1,057ft. main span was at that time the longest in the world. Not only was the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge the world's longest, but it was also the first to utilize both vertical suspenders and diagonal stays fanning from either tower. This advance was next seen on the Brooklyn Bridge (also designed by John Roebling), which surpassed the Cincinnati bridge in length in 1883.
A Few More Paintings of Roebling Bridge
I just did a quick search for a few images of paintings of this classic suspension bridge. Unfortunately, Google did not include artist or other details. But still an interesting display.
If anyone knows the individual who painted any of these submissions, please let me know and I will add an attribution. And if you would like me to include other paintings in this review, just send them along to me as a comment to this post or to my email address (dwolf @ outlook.com).




