The Banks of the Bievre near Bicetre

Rousseau painted this view of the Bievre river near Bicetre around 1908 or 1909, one of the last landscapes he made before his death in 1910. He was 64 or 65 years old, retired from his customs job since 1893, and painting full time in a small apartment in the Plaisance quarter of Paris. He identified the subject himself in a handwritten note attached to the back of the canvas, dated 1909, the year he consigned the painting to the dealer Ambroise Vollard. The Bievre was a small river that ran through the southern edge of Paris into the Seine. By Rousseau's time it was heavily polluted by the tanneries and dye works along its banks, and it would be buried underground in the early 20th century. But certain stretches still offered a rural view, and Rousseau painted it as he saw it: a tree-lined path along the water, with a few figures in peasant dress walking at the left. An aqueduct, the Aqueduc d'Arcueil, is visible in the background, its arches painted with the careful precision of a man who had spent his career measuring goods at a customs house. The painting is small, about 21 by 18 inches. The composition is built in flat, horizontal bands: the path in the foreground, the trees in the middle, the sky at the top. The trees are painted as individual, carefully outlined shapes, each one a slightly different green. The figures are tiny, barely two inches tall, painted in simple blocks of color. There is no atmospheric perspective: the distant aqueduct is as sharp and clear as the trees in the foreground. Rousseau's landscapes of the Paris suburbs are less famous than his jungle paintings, but they are the subject he returned to most consistently. He painted the parks, rivers, and outskirts of Paris throughout his career, treating them with the same careful attention he gave to imaginary jungles. These paintings record a landscape that was disappearing even as he painted it, as the city expanded and buried its rivers under pavement. Oil on canvas, 54 by 45 centimeters. The paint is applied in thin, smooth layers with no visible brushwork. Each tree, each figure, each arch of the aqueduct is outlined in dark paint and filled with flat color, like a coloring book. The surface has the still, worked quality of someone who painted slowly and with great care. The vertical format and muted greens make this print work well in a hallway, study, or bedroom. The soft palette suits rooms with natural wood and warm white walls. The 11x14 or 16x20 framed version is a good size for most walls. The painting has a quiet, contemplative quality that suits rooms where people read or rest. The painting entered the Met's collection in 1939, gifted by Marshall Field, the department store heir and publisher of the Chicago Sun. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.