The Seine with the Pont de Clichy

The Pont de Clichy on the Seine was among the most-visited suburban painting subjects of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist era, frequented by Van Gogh, Émile Bernard, Paul Signac, and Seurat in the mid-1880s. Van Gogh's summer 1887 river scenes from the Paris suburbs reflect a specific moment of intense artistic exchange: he was spending time with Signac at Asnières, absorbing the Neo-Impressionist divisionist technique directly from one of its primary practitioners. The Seine's surface, with its complex reflections and perpetual movement, was the perfect demonstration subject for broken-colour technique — the water's optical complexity rewarding the Impressionist approach of rapid, separate touches more than the uniform surface of a wall or field. Van Gogh never fully adopted divisionism's systematic rigour, but these Parisian river scenes show him closer to its principles than almost anywhere else in his work. The painting's current location is unknown.

The water surface is built with horizontally applied strokes of blue, green, and white that create shimmering reflective quality. The bridge is rendered in firmer, more geometric strokes. The sky above is handled lightly. Colour mixing happens on the canvas surface rather than on the palette — a technique absorbed from the Impressionists he was meeting in Paris at this time.