Seine in Saint-Mammès

When the painter Gustave Caillebotte died in February 1894, he left the French state his collection of pictures by his friends, asking that it hang in the Musée du Luxembourg and later in the Louvre. It was an awkward gift. The negotiations dragged on for two years, and the state kept only part of it. The collection held nine Sisleys, and six were accepted, this river view among them. It shows the Seine at Saint-Mammès, the bargemen's village where the Loing flows in, painted in 1885 and signed at the lower left. Most of the canvas goes to a streaky, moving sky, with the houses and a bridge pressed into a thin band along the far bank. The curator of the Luxembourg collected it from Caillebotte's brother Martial in November 1896, and it went on public view there the following February.