Barges and Huts, Bank of the Seine

By 1891 Caillebotte had stopped exhibiting almost entirely and moved out of Paris for good, to a house at Petit-Gennevilliers on the Seine just below Argenteuil. He was 43, sailing and designing racing yachts, growing orchids under glass, and painting the stretch of river he could see from his own bank. Nothing about the subject is ceremonial, a few moored boats and a wooden hut at the water's edge, and the canvas is small enough to have been carried out and back in an afternoon. He had three years left and died suddenly in 1894, at 45. The picture hangs in Cologne as part of the Corboud collection, placed with the Wallraf-Richartz on permanent loan in 2001.