Seine River Seen From Iéna Bridge

In 1875 Gauguin, still in his twenties, spent his days on the Paris stock exchange, in a job a family friend had found for him. Painting filled his spare hours, and this snowy view of the Seine, signed and dated 1875 in the lower corner, comes from those years. The bridge in the distance is the Pont d'Iéna, which Napoleon had named after his 1806 victory over Prussia. Nearly two thirds of the canvas is low grey sky. Beneath it the river runs a cold green, and the near bank is a strip of snow where a few dark figures work beside a moored barge. Out by the arches a small steamboat trails a puff of smoke. The picture reached the national museums in 1941, bequeathed by Paul Jamot, a Louvre curator who had owned it since 1910.