Banks of a Canal, near Naples

Banks of a Canal, near Naples was painted during Caillebotte's Italian journey of 1894, one of the last works he completed before his sudden death from a stroke in February of that year. Italy represented an unusual departure for an artist so deeply rooted in Paris and Normandy, and the Southern Italian canal scenes show him responding to unfamiliar light and vegetation with a directness that makes these works among his most spontaneous. The warm luminosity of the Neapolitan hinterland produced a looser, more sun-drenched palette than anything in his French oeuvre.

Warm ochres, dusty yellows, and Mediterranean blues dominate the palette, rendered with freer brushwork than his French landscapes. The canal provides a horizontal axis against which trees and banks are set in short upward strokes.