Nautical Elegance, Hygienism, and Pollution of the Seine in the 19th Century
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 3 min read
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the banks of the Seine and the Marne, particularly around Asnières or Bougival, established themselves as the favoured setting for a new bourgeois sociability dedicated to nautical leisure.
The practice of rowing or boating developed spectacularly there, bringing with it a strict codification of appearances and behaviours.
However, behind the shimmering surface of these sporting gatherings lay a less healthy reality: they evolved, dove, and bathed in a veritable cesspool.
The Cercle Nautique d’Asnières: From Aristocratic Pomp to Sporting Practice
In the mid-nineteenth century, the pioneers of boating appeared on the pontoons in attire ill-suited to physical exertion.
According to Alphonse Karr and Léon Gataye in 1858, it was not uncommon to observe rowers dressed in heavy overcoats, their hands encased in immaculate gloves. Rowing was then merely an extension of salon life, a representational entertainment.
The evolution toward true sporting ergonomics found its origin in the power struggles within the early nautical institutions.
In Asnières, an initiative led by John Arthur gave birth to a circle modelled after the Thames clubs, soon established in a magnificent villa on the banks of the Seine; but the group's overly mundane spirit led to its dislocation.
In 1855, the French members took over the management to found the Cercle Nautique d'Asnières.
The administration of the new circle banned disparate outfits; the choice fell on a jersey and trousers made of white flannel and a straw hat adorned with a light blue ribbon. Convenience and the early stages of sporting hygiene were put into place. Édouard Manet would depict this in his painting Boating.
Gustave Caillebotte retained aristocratic dress in Boating Party, but respected the sporting attire of Yerres for his scenes of Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres (1877).
As for Ferdinand Gueldry, he captured the assaults of sporting rowing teams on the Seine.
A Macabre Sanitary Reality
At the very moment when boaters donned their immaculate white flannels with a view toward hygienist practice, the waters they cut through had become true cesspools.
Under the impetus of Louis Pasteur's discoveries, it was found that the waters of the Seine were contaminated by hundreds of thousands of bacteria and toxic microorganisms.
The alluvium on which the weeping willows grew was actually composed of the foam from Parisian sewers and layers of bones. The places of relaxation for the sporting bourgeoisie and Parisian workers on their Sunday outings proved to be of grave sanitary non-compliance, between the flow of untreated sewage from Paris downstream of the capital, the spreading fields for faecal matter around Bougival, and the progressive crowding of polluting industries.
The setting of the sportsmen and Impressionists was not what one would expect; it literally reeked. Spectators confronted with Édouard Manet's brutal painting, Argenteuil, or Berthe Morisot's Hanging Out the Washing, which might seem gentler, were aware of this, hence their disgust.
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