Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil

Painted in 1874 at Argenteuil and now at the Courtauld Gallery in London, this canvas belongs to the crucial summer when Manet worked alongside Monet and Renoir at this suburban river town and briefly embraced a genuinely Impressionist manner. Monet's studio boat was moored at Argenteuil; Renoir came regularly; and under their combined influence Manet loosened his characteristically controlled brushwork, moved outdoors, and adopted a lighter, more atmospheric palette than the studio-based method of his formation. The Courtauld's collection is exceptional for Impressionism, and this Argenteuil landscape demonstrates the specific transformation Manet underwent in summer 1874 — dissolving his figures into atmosphere, treating the Seine's reflections with the broken brushwork his younger companions had pioneered, exploring what pure outdoor painting could achieve. Yet he never fully converted: the transformation was a summer experiment rather than a permanent change, and he returned to his preference for substantial figures over pure landscape. This riverside view thus occupies a uniquely liminal position in his career, the moment when the founder of modern painting most closely resembled the movement he had inadvertently helped to create.

The paint is applied with notably freer, more Impressionist brushwork than most of Manet's work — the water rendered in flickering horizontal strokes of blue, green, and white that capture reflected light in motion. The palette is high-keyed and luminous, closer to Monet's Seine paintings than to Manet's typical tonal approach. The brushwork remains more assertive than Monet's — each stroke has a declarative quality.