The Gate of St. Cloud, Paris

Despite its 'Religious' genre classification, 'The Gate of St. Cloud, Paris,' painted by Marquet in 1904, is a Paris cityscape—the historic entrance gate to the park of Saint-Cloud west of the city. Saint-Cloud's park, laid out by Le Nôtre for Louis XIV, was accessible to Parisians by rail and tram, and its formal architecture—including historic gates and grand allées—made it a distinctive landscape subject different from the urban Seine views that dominated Marquet's city work. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds this early example of his excursion beyond Paris's central fabric.

Marquet applies his characteristic reduction of form to the architectural subject, rendering the gate's stone elements as simplified planes with suppressed detail. The tree-lined park setting offers the interplay of geometry and organic form that he found productive in his Paris urban views.