The Quai d'Ivry depicts people dressed in their finest, with matching outfits and umbrellas walking on the riverbank, and it's merely the crisscrossing of two colour planes.
On the upper left part of the image, an airship is floating in the air. There are also several white buildings with trees behind them. At the left edge of the painting is a big smokestack, most probably for an industry. The image also has Rousseau's name at the bottom left, symbolising his signature. The primary setting of this image was an industrial area near the source of the river Seine.

Henri Rousseau had developed a unique painting style that was largely self-taught. His style evidenced the absence of correct proportional painting methods, applying colours at one point perspective and repeatedly using sharp, unnatural colours. Additionally, Henri Rousseau also used to work the canvas methodically from the top down in most of his paintings, including the Quai d'Ivry. In the painting Quai d'Ivry, Rousseau claimed to have innovated a new genre of portrait landscape which he fulfilled by starting an image with a specific view, like drawing his favourite part of the city and then painting a man in the foreground.