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Prior to becoming one of the leading artists of post-impressionism, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) worked as a stockbroker in Paris. He took painting workshops every Sunday, eventually gaining the skills and confidence to begin participating in impressionist exhibitions, before finally becoming a full-time artist. In the mid-1880s, he moved away from impressionism, developing his own style combining reality and imagination, which became known as “synthetism.” Gauguin’s fascination with the “primitive” led him to spend time in Tahiti, an island in the South Pacific, where he pursued a simple and pure form of art. Using the vibrant colors of the tropics, he sought to capture the purity and innocence of indigenous people. The symbolic and non-naturalist tendencies in Gauguin’s works were highly influential in the emergence of twentieth-century modern art movements like Fauvism and German expressionism.
Crane on the Banks of the Seine is one of forty-five extant works from Gauguin’s early period (1879–1893), when he was still studying at painting workshops before becoming a full -time artist. After his son Emile was born in 1874, Gauguin moved to an apartment in downtown Paris, where he began painting various landscapes around the Seine River. This particular work shows a view from Port de Grenelle, which was about ten minutes away from Gauguin’s home, looking towards the Île aux Cygnes.
The placement of the crane in the center and two boats near the foreground provides a balanced and stable composition. The mobile crane, which was used to handle construction materials, and the boiler factory, visible beneath the crane, reflect the bustling construction that was reshaping Paris at that time. Notably, there are some discrepancies between the painting and the actual location, such as the omission of Île aux Cygnes, which should be visible on the horizon. These deviations likely reflect Gauguin’s efforts to improve the order and composition of the work, as he produced multiple paintings of this area around the same time. Although this painting does not yet show the use of light that is characteristic of impressionism, the influence of French landscape painter Eugène Boudin and Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind can be discerned.
