The Seine near Rouen at sunset was Pinchon's home territory in every sense — the river he had painted since boyhood, the light he knew more intimately than any other. In a painting of 1910 that subject and that knowledge combine to produce something of real quality. The palette here is the key to everything. Sunset on the Seine demanded colours that a more cautious painter might have held back from — the deep crimsons and burning oranges of the sky reflected in the water below, the way the river surface breaks those colours into fragments and reassembles them differently with every ripple. By 1912 Pinchon had been absorbing the lessons of Fauvism for the better part of a decade, and it shows in the confidence with which he pushes the warm tones to their limit without losing the underlying truth of the scene. The brushwork is loose and gestural in the sky, more structured in the water where the reflections demand a firmer hand. The whole has the quality of something observed quickly and set down with absolute conviction. Pinchon (1886–1943) spent almost his entire life on the banks of this river. Claude Monet, who encountered his work in Rouen in 1903, described him as possessing "a surprising touch in the service of a surprising eye." This is a painting that earns that description. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen holds the most significant public collection of his work. Works of this quality and this date rarely come to market.