Sailing ship on the Seine at Argenteuil

This small sailboat on the Seine dates from 1893, and it was a working picture. Marie Berhaut, who compiled the catalogue of Caillebotte's paintings, counted it among three studies of this motif for his large Regatta at Argenteuil of the same year. Conservators in Cologne have since studied the canvas. At its lower edge they found the mark left by the clamp of a field easel, which points to the picture being painted outdoors, in front of the river. The paint went on fast, wet into wet, probably in one or two sessions, and in the sailor's trouser leg something hard, most likely the end of the brush, was scratched through the wet colour. The signature at lower left was added later, over paint that had fully dried. Caillebotte died in February 1894, and Berhaut believed signatures like this were put on afterwards by his brother Martial or by the painter Renoir, the executor of his will.