Impressionism on the Seine

Throughout the nineteenth century, artists painted the Seine, its light, its banks, its bridges and its ports. Above ail, however, it was the impressionists and their emulators, careful observers of modern life, who made it their favorite subject. From dawn to dusk, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte and Armand Guillaumin never grew weary of observing the play of reflections on the surface of the water. Often the Seine also enchanted Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot. Many artists lived or stayed regularly along the banks of the river, finding in it their main source of inspiration. For the landscape of the Seine was evolving under the combined effect of industrialization and the advent of leisure. With its iron bridges, its great ports, its industrial dynamism, and also its boats, its yachts and its strolling visitors in their white dresses, the Seine was the heart of modernity. A selection of around fifty paintings traces the evolution of Impressionism and takes us on a journey along the river, from Paris to Le Havre, passing through Argenteuil, Vétheuil and Giverny.