Bank of the Seine

Bank of the Seine (1887) at the Van Gogh Museum belongs to the series of Parisian river subjects Van Gogh produced during his summer 1887 painting trips to the Seine's western suburbs — Asnières, Clichy, Courbevoie — in the company of Émile Bernard and Paul Signac. The riverbank subjects gave him the opportunity to explore a classic Impressionist landscape genre — water, reflections, the play of light on a moving surface — that the Dutch tonal tradition he had trained in had barely touched. Reflections in water demanded a specific technique he was developing: horizontal strokes of varying colour that built up the surface's movement without losing the sense of a single, flat, reflective plane. The Seine subjects of 1887 represent his most explicitly Impressionist work — lighter, more atmospheric, more concerned with optical conditions than with emotional states — before the Arles period pushed him beyond Impressionism toward something more personally expressive.

River surface painting required Van Gogh to develop a specific brushwork for water—horizontal strokes that suggest the plane of the surface while broken colour notation captures the movement and reflection of light on moving water. The bank and vegetation above the water line are painted with his characteristic directional strokes following natural forms. The composition's horizontal organisation reinforces the stillness or movement of the water below.