Skiffs

Skiffs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, belongs to Caillebotte's celebrated series of river scenes painted at Argenteuil and along the Seine, where competitive rowing had become a fashionable leisure activity for Paris's professional class. The narrow racing boats — skiffs and yoles — slicing through flat water were perfect subjects for Caillebotte's formal interests: elongated shapes, extreme foreshortening, and the tension between movement and stillness that photography was beginning to reveal. Exhibited at the 1877 Impressionist show, similar works scandalized critics expecting picturesque river views and received instead near-abstract geometries.

The boats' slender hulls are rendered with almost diagrammatic clarity, their reflections fragmenting in the water below. Caillebotte manages the rippling surface through short horizontal strokes of varied greens and blues, against which the geometric precision of the skiffs reads as deliberate formal contrast.