Five Paintings, Five Places

On an artistic Tour de France, Deborah Nash traces famous works by 19th-century French painters to the locations that inspired them and finds out what remains today.

- Deborah Nash

Great art thrives on a defined sense of place, with its own story to tell. For every painting and sculpture there exists a landscape, town, street or building that has influenced a particular choice of form, colour, or in the case of the Impressionists, light. These works of art are entwined with the locations that have inspired them, and can lend a unique viewpoint, not only on the physical space itself, but also on its place in time and social history. Exploring the works of some of the most accomplished French artists of the 19th century within the modern-day incarnations of those settings can be a vivid reflection of how times have changed in the past 150 years.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte), by Georges Seurat, 1884-6; Chicago Institute of Art.

La Jatte (which means bowl or basin) is a small grassy island on the River Seine and spans the communes of Neuilly-sur- Seine and Levallois-Perret, just to the north-west of central Paris. In the 19th century, La Jatte was popular for its dance halls; it was also a place where the middle classes came to picnic and to fish. In the early 20th century, the island was a cradle of industry: racing cars, boats and planes were built there. Today, La Jatte is among the most expensive residential areas in the capital. Two road bridges cross the Seine here: the Pont de Levallois and the Pont Maréchal-Juin.