Artist: Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin Title: Quai de la Rapée Oil on canvas, 50 x 79 cm Private Collection

Guillaumin treats Paris as if it were Venice. His quays and his Seine river banks make one thing of the Grand Canal seen by an over excited colorist. He accumulates little spots of green, blue, pink, orange, lilac, violet, red, yellow.... But these spots come together to confuse and erase everything. Gustave Geffroy, La Justice, 19 April 1881