View of a River with Rowing Boats

Van Gogh's 1887 view of a river with rowing boats, painted during his Paris years, belongs to the suburban river paintings he made at Asnières and along the Seine. Rowing was a popular leisure activity, and the river dotted with small recreational boats was a quintessentially modern, Impressionist subject — Monet and Renoir had painted similar subjects at Argenteuil a decade earlier. Van Gogh's version reflects his developing Impressionist approach to water, light, and leisure. The work is currently unlocated or in a private collection.

The river subject gives Van Gogh material for practicing his treatment of water reflections and the specific quality of light on the Seine. The boats provide compositional structure within the horizontal water surface. His evolving Paris palette brings varied color to the scene — blues and greens of water, warm tones of boats and riverbanks.