The Plain of Gennevilliers from the Hills of Argenteuil

From 1869 the city of Paris began running its sewage onto the plain of Gennevilliers, a sandy flat inside a loop of the Seine. The engineer Alfred Durand-Claye filtered the waste through the soil and let market gardeners farm what came up. Six hectares were under the system in the first year. By 1889 it was close to 800, and the plain was growing much of the salad and cabbage that Paris ate. Caillebotte bought property at Petit-Gennevilliers on the near bank in 1881 and settled there for good in 1888, the year of this view looking out over the plain from the slope at Argenteuil. The fields in it are that system at work. He was 40, had more or less stopped exhibiting, and was giving his time to his garden and to designing racing yachts.