The Plain of Gennevilliers

The flat ground in this picture had been doing an odd job for about a decade before Caillebotte painted it. Under treaties signed in 1872 and 1873 the city of Paris pumped its sewage out to the plain of Gennevilliers and let it filter through the sand, both to clean the water and to feed market gardens, and the vegetables grown there went back into the Paris markets. Engineers and public-health doctors argued about the scheme for years. Caillebotte knew the area closely. He had bought property across the river at Petit Gennevilliers in 1881, kept his boats there, and settled there for good later in the decade. The canvas measures 54 by 65 centimetres and hangs in Bogota, in the collection Fernando Botero gave to Colombia's central bank in 2000.