Au bord du canal

Armand Guillaumin's 'Au bord du canal' (By the Canal, 1888) belongs to his sustained engagement with the industrial and semi-industrial landscapes of the Paris periphery — his canal subjects depicting the waterways that served the city's industrial needs, the working landscape of barges, towpaths, and canal-side industry that the Impressionists generally preferred to the more picturesque river and forest subjects. Guillaumin's willingness to engage with the working, unbeautiful landscape around Paris distinguished his subject matter and connected him to the most socially engaged aspects of the Impressionist project.

Guillaumin renders the canal scene with his characteristic vivid palette and bold brushwork — the industrial landscape's qualities (the still water, the geometric forms of the canal infrastructure, the working barges) depicted with the chromatic intensity and painterly directness he maintained throughout his career. His color in canal subjects tends toward the unexpected intensity he brought to even prosaic subjects — the canal's grey-green water, the industrial buildings' forms, and the sky all rendered with his characteristic chromatic confidence.