Gustave Caillebotte

Canvas has not been lined. There is a faint horizontal strecher bar mark near upper edge. A pin dot size spot of loss due to prior frame abrasion near lower right corner. Under UV light: a few small spots of inpainting at upper right corner, otherwise fine. Work is in very good condition.
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Caillebotte spent the predominance of his later years at his house in Petit Genevilliers and the paintings from this period are icons of the Impressionist movement. Argenteuil, in particular, had significant draw for the Impressionist painters and Caillebotte was undoubtedly influenced by Monet's series of the same subject. The bridge that Caillebotte depicts at left in the present work is most likely the railroad bridge (see fig. 1) and represents the presence of industrial development within the rural landscape that so preoccupied painters at the end of the 19th century.

Anne Distel and Rodolphe Rapetti write of the interplay between the Argenteuil works of Caillebotte and Monet, "...we know that Monet exhibited several Argenteuil canvases from 1876 onward, and that Caillebotte acquired one of them. It is certain that he began to frequent Argenteuil and Petit Gennevilliers on a regular basis only after Monet's departure, in early 1878. But it is also probable that Caillebotte saw the banks of the Seine through Monet's eyes and that, his boating activities aside, this was one of the reason's the site interested him" (Anne Distel & Rodolphe Rapetti, Gustave Caillebotte, Urban Impressionist (exhibition catalogue), Paris, 1994, p. 268).

Fig. 1 The Seine at Argenteuil