Berges d'un canal, près de Naples

This is a young man's painting. Caillebotte made it in 1872, around the age of 24, well before he became known as the painter of rain-slicked Paris streets and the quiet patron who bought his friends' Impressionist canvases when almost no one else would. He had trained as a lawyer and come into family money, and he travelled south to Italy, where he painted this stretch of canal water and low buildings under a bright southern light. It is a modest, early work, closer to a careful study than to the bold city scenes that came later. Within a few years he would be exhibiting in Paris alongside Monet and Renoir.