View of the Quai d' Asnières

In 1900 Paris was busy dazzling the world at its great Exposition, and the newest art was all about speed and light. This canvas looks at none of that. Henri Rousseau painted the plain riverbank at Asnières, a working suburb downstream of the city, where the Seine carried barges past sheds and modest houses. Rousseau had spent years as a toll collector at the city gates, which earned him the nickname the Douanier, the customs man, and he taught himself to paint on Sundays. Trained painters found his flat, careful world stiff and almost childish. The American collector Albert Barnes disagreed, and gathered more of Rousseau's work than anyone. This quiet quay hangs among them in Philadelphia today.