Rivière bleue, Montreuil-Bellay

Montreuil-Bellay, the medieval town in the Maine-et-Loire with its riverside castle and old bridge reflected in the slow Thouet, was an unusual subject for Le Sidaner, whose water subjects were typically the still canals of Flanders or the tidal inlets of the Channel coast. The 1897 canvas, depicting the Thouet river in a distinctly blue-toned light, is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, which situates it within the broader context of French landscape painting across the period. The title's emphasis on the blueness of the water — "Rivière bleue" — signals that Le Sidaner is less interested in the town as a topographic document than in the specific colour phenomenon of still river water reflecting a particular sky. Blue rivers in French painting of this period carried associations with the Impressionist tradition — Monet and Sisley had explored blue-toned water extensively — but Le Sidaner's approach strips away the flickering activity of Impressionist brushwork in favour of a more contemplative, stilled surface. The year 1897 places this canvas at a transitional moment: Le Sidaner was moving from his northern coastal subjects toward the broader European excursion painting that would characterise the early 1900s.

The river is rendered in a sustained deep blue tonality that distinguishes it sharply from the warmer tones of the surrounding landscape. Le Sidaner uses smooth, horizontal brushwork in the water passages to reinforce the stillness of the surface, reserving more varied, broken handling for riverbanks and vegetation where light is more active.