The Seine at Port-Marly, the Wash-House

A washerwoman leans against a tree and looks straight at us, while behind her barges line the Seine and a factory chimney smokes. Pissarro painted Port-Marly in 1872 not as a place of pleasure but as a place of work.

The story behind the painting

Pissarro painted this oil on canvas, 46.5 by 56 cm, at Port-Marly in 1872. The river nearby had already drawn Camille Corot, who stayed at Port-Marly in August 1872 and painted canvases there, including The Bend of the Seine at Port-Marly, and who summed up his subtle approach to light as never losing the first impression that moved us. In 1867 Louis Auguste Delahaye had been allowed to build the paper mill that Pissarro shows; it burned down one night in August 1904. Pissarro had already painted this same site in 1869.

What to look for

On the left bank a washerwoman stands against a tree and looks at the viewer, leading us into the activities of the river. Barges fitted out as wash-houses and other barges line the Seine, and beyond them rises the paper mill of Port-Marly with its smoking chimney. The dark colours match a cloudy winter day. The barges along the towpath and the floating boat form a diagonal, set against the verticals of the chimney, the masts and the tree trunks. Compare it with Corot's late view of the same river to see how far the young Impressionists had moved.

Meaning and intent

Far from the pleasures of the well-off middle class, Pissarro shows the beginning of industry in the suburb between Bougival and Port-Marly, and human labour. The painting reflects his interest in social reality: traditional handwork and industrial machinery face each other on the same stretch of water. Alfred Sisley painted nearby sites too, including sand dredgers at Port-Marly, but in one of those canvases he shows the paper mill with no chimney, only smoke from an opening in the gable. Pissarro keeps the chimney at the centre.

Legacy

The painting was shown at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, listed as belonging to Gustave Caillebotte. Caillebotte bequeathed it to the French state in 1894, and through Leonce Benedite it entered the Musee du Luxembourg; it is now in the Musee d'Orsay. Since the 1990s a life-size reproduction has stood at the spot where it was painted, at the end of the towpath, on a trail of the Pays des Impressionnistes. Vegetation now blocks much of the view, and a rowing school stands where the mill once was.