Van Gogh along the Seine

Who would have thought of travelling to Amsterdam to discover the suburbs of Paris? French and English visitors are in luck, however, since the Van Gogh Museum is within easy reach, unlike the Art Institute of Chicago, which hosted the first stage of this prestigious exhibition this summer. As the exhibition’s geographical perimeter is confined to Clichy and Asnières, two towns separated by the Seine (ill. 1) and undoubtedly little known to the international public, the choice of an enticing - and some would say commercial - title was a natural one. While Van Gogh of course takes the lion’s share, he was far from the first to explore this suburb, since Seurat began working at La Grande Jatte as early as 1881, while Signac and Bernard painted in Asnières between 1882 and 1884, before Angrand and above all Van Gogh, who worked between Clichy and Asnières for just three months in the spring of 1887. The exhibition is very well contextualised, presenting from the outset all the attractions of the area, with its leafy residential areas, bridges and banks of the Seine, but also railways and smoking factory chimneys: water sports and dance halls are part of an industrial landscape that is as new as it is modern.

1. Aerial view of Asnières and Clichy taken by Commandant Fribourg on 27 June 1855
Photo: Archives municipales d’Asnières-sur-Seine

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Asnières, the crucible of modernity? Accessible on foot or by train, the town was bound to attract young artists in search of new motifs but above all in the process of imagining a new way of painting. The tour begins by following in Van Gogh’s footsteps, as we leave Paris, still surrounded by its fortifications to reach the banks of the Seine where polluting wash boats still float, like the one immortalised by the artist in a delightful little painting from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond. While the exhibition’s two curators have succeeded in bringing together more than twenty-five works by Van Gogh between May and July 1887, these are fortunately interspersed with equally pleasing canvases by Signac (ill. 2), who is also very well represented on the gallery walls and a true local of the stage.

2. Paul Signac (1863-1935)
Quai de Clichy, temps gris, 1887
Oil on canvas - 46 x 65.5 cm
Private collection
Photo: Peter Schälchli

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Unlike Van Gogh, who came on foot from Montmartre, Signac and Bernard had in fact lived in Asnières, where their families had settled in 1880 and again in 1884. As the first station on the first railway line to be inaugurated in France, the town nestling in the loop of the Seine, which also includes Gennevilliers, Colombes, Bois-Colombes and Courbevoie, was easily accessible from the capital. Following in the footsteps of Impressionist Paris, Asnières offered cafés and restaurants, activities and water sports, in stark contrast to the industrial towns of Clichy and Levallois. The…