Banks of the Yerres

The Caillebotte family had a country property at Yerres, on the small river of that name about 20 kilometres south-east of Paris. His father, who had grown rich supplying beds and linen to the French army, bought it in 1860, when Gustave was 12, and the family spent every summer there. In 1875, at 27, he worked that riverbank steadily, the water, the rowing boats, the bathers, the towpath under the trees, and most of his outdoor painting in those years was done on that stretch. His mother died in 1878 and the property was sold the year after. His pictures of the Yerres stop there.