Voiliers à Argenteuil

Sailboats rest on the glittering Seine near the painter's own house. Caillebotte loved sailing, and here the water itself seems made of light.

The story behind the painting

Caillebotte painted Voiliers a Argenteuil around 1888. His early work of the 1870s and early 1880s was a bold kind of realism, stricter and more precise than Impressionism, even if he shared its love of light and modern life. Only when he began working at Gennevilliers and Argenteuil from 1881, and bought a boat there, did his style lean more and more toward the original Impressionism. This view shows the bank and jetty near the house he bought on the Seine in 1887.

What to look for

On the water floats a flotilla of pleasure boats, two with sails raised, some partly moored. On the horizon you can see the wooden bridge of Argenteuil, the railway bridge behind it, and further still the hills of Sannois and Orgemont. The surface of the water is not smooth but built of small strokes laid down with analytical care, a technique Caillebotte borrowed from his great model Claude Monet to render transparency and glittering reflections. Pure colours and harmonious tones strengthen the effect.

Meaning and intent

The scene reflects Caillebotte's passion for sailing, painted close to home, from the place where he lived with the river. In these years he painted various works in a similar format, usually outdoors, without caring that the critics were less interested. The picture feels like a private pleasure shared: light, water and boats seen by someone who knew them from the deck. It is the river he sailed on, painted by the man who sailed it.

Legacy

When he showed it at the exhibition of Les XX in Brussels in 1888, attention went mostly to Post-Impressionist works, and his painting was criticised as old-fashioned. Today his works of this period are counted among the finest of Impressionism. The canvas, about 65 by 55 cm, was once in the Louvre and has belonged to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris since 1986. It is an oil on canvas, close in size to the other river views he painted in the same years.