The Seine at Pont de Grenelle

The Seine at Pont de Grenelle, at the Wallraf–Richartz Museum in Cologne, was painted in 1875 during Gauguin's years as a part-time painter working in Paris. The Pont de Grenelle — a bridge in the 15th and 16th arrondissements — was being rebuilt in the 1870s after the reconstruction of Paris under Haussmann, and its depiction places Gauguin in the tradition of painting the evolving modern city that preoccupied Monet and Caillebotte at the same moment. The work's presence in Cologne demonstrates how early continental collectors tracked the careers of future Post-Impressionist masters.

Gauguin renders the river surface with horizontal strokes of blue and gray, the bridge reflected in the water below its physical span. The atmospheric treatment of the Paris sky — diffuse, slightly hazy — is handled with restrained Impressionist brushwork that avoids the drama he would later bring to tropical light.