Barques, quai du Pothuis à Pontoise

Loiseau's 1903 view of the boats at the Pothuis quay in Pontoise participates in the artistic history of that Seine valley town, where Pissarro had painted his most important canvases in the 1870s and established Pontoise as a location inseparable from French Impressionist landscape history. By painting at Pontoise three decades after Pissarro, Loiseau was both following a known landscape and implicitly measuring himself against his great predecessor. The quayside with moored boats was among Pissarro's own subjects at Pontoise, giving Loiseau's view an intertextual quality. The work is in the Richard Green collection alongside the other Norman views.

The quayside boats are rendered with the broken, water-light-responsive touch characteristic of Loiseau's mature manner, the Seine's reflective surface interacting with the vertical elements of the moored boats and the quay architecture. The color palette is harmonious and atmospheric, the Pontoise light rendered with attentive plein-air observation.