During summer 1884, Twachtman—then a student at the Académie Julian—rented a château with his family at Arques-la-Bataille, near the port of Dieppe in Normandy, and focused on painting commonplace views of the Arques River valley. Here, he portrayed the edge of the Béthune, a tributary of the Arques, bordered by a fringe of reeds and meadow flowers. In his Paris studio the following winter, he reconsidered the naturalistic sketch and created his monumental canvas Arques-la-Bataille (68.52).

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