Les Usines Cail et le quai de Grenelle

Les Usines Cail et le quai de Grenelle (1875) on cardboard is an exceptionally early Gauguin — made when he was twenty-seven, still employed by the Bertin firm, and painting on any available support including cardboard. The Cail iron foundries on the quai de Grenelle were a major engineering works producing cast-iron components and steam equipment; their proximity to the Paris riverfront made them visible to any artist working along the Seine quays. Gauguin's decision to paint this industrial subject rather than seeking out more conventionally picturesque views places him within the tradition of social observation that characterized the most honest Impressionist landscape work — Caillebotte's Paris street scenes, Pissarro's factories at Pontoise. The subject's unusual character within Gauguin's early output makes it an important document: the proto-industrial Paris quayside was being transformed by the Third Republic's modernization program, and this modest cardboard sketch preserves one aspect of that transformation.

The factory architecture and quayside infrastructure are rendered with pragmatic directness, the industrial forms providing a geometric counterpoint to the water's surface. Gauguin uses cooler, grayer tones for the buildings than for the sky and river reflections, giving the industrial structures their own chromatic weight against the natural elements.