The Seine near Puteaux

Antonín Chittussi's 'The Seine near Puteaux' (1885) is one of his French subjects — Puteaux on the Seine just west of Paris was at the time a semi-industrial suburb where the river combined commercial activity (barges, manufacturing) with remnants of the riverside landscape that attracted plein air painters. The Seine near Puteaux would later be the setting for Seurat's 'La Grande Jatte' island (across the river at Neuilly), and the area's combination of industrial modernity and natural river beauty was characteristic of the suburban Paris landscape that attracted French naturalist painters.

Chittussi renders the Seine at Puteaux with the atmospheric sensitivity his Barbizon training gave him — the specific quality of the Paris basin light on the river, the riverside vegetation, and any industrial or commercial elements of the Puteaux scene depicted with the naturalist directness that distinguished his approach from the more conventional Salon landscape. His handling of the river's reflections and the atmospheric quality of the Seine valley creates the landscape's characteristic quality.