Banks of the Yerres

1878 was the last full summer the Caillebotte family had at Yerres. Gustave's father had bought the estate southeast of Paris in 1860, and from the mid-1870s Gustave spent his summers painting almost nothing but the place: the house, the park, the kitchen garden and the small river that ran along the bottom of it, close to 90 pictures, around 20 of them on the water. His mother died that October. In 1879 he and his brother Martial sold the property, and he never painted the Yerres again. This is among the smallest things he made there, oil on a board about 22 centimetres wide, carried down to the bank and worked on the spot. The water under the overhanging trees takes up most of it, with a single figure out in a boat near the far side.