View of the Quai d'Asnières (Vue du quai d'Asnières)

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FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

This work is on display in the exhibition Henri Rousseau: A Painter's Secrets in the Barnes Foundation's Roberts Gallery, October 19, 2025 through February 22, 2026 and at the Musée de l'Orangerie, March 24-July 20, 2026. In the last half of the 19th century, impressionist and post-impressionist artists were drawn to the Paris neighborhood of Asnières and its increasingly industrial character. Monet painted laborers unloading a coal barge, while Seurat depicted workers bathing in the Seine. Here Rousseau emphasizes not the human presence of the riverside neighborhood, but rather its large trees with their elongated trunks, which tower above the small figures in silhouette moving along walkway. The unattended sailboats in the river seem to have the scale of toys.

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