The Seine at Pont de Grenelle

In 1875 Gauguin was working for a stockbroker in Paris. He was 27, married, doing well enough to buy pictures by Pissarro and Cezanne, and painting was a Sunday matter. This small panel, about 30 by 44 centimetres, is one of the river views he made in those years, the Seine where it runs past the Pont de Grenelle in the west of the city. The crash on the Paris bourse in 1882 ended the arrangement. He lost his living, decided to paint full time, and within two years the family had moved to his wife's relatives in Copenhagen. Cologne shows the panel as part of the Corboud collection of French Impressionists, which came to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum on permanent loan in 2001.