Throughout the nineteenth century, artists painted the Seine, its light, its banks, its bridges and its ports. Above all, however, it was the impressionists and their emulators, careful observers of modern life, who made it their favourite subject. From dawn to dusk, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte and Armand Guillaumin never grew weary of observing the play of reflections on the surface of the water. Often the Seine also enchanted Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.