Alfred Sisley

Humbert Collection, Paris
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 3, 1910, lot 53
Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris
Max Kaganovitch, Paris (acquired from the above in 1949)
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner on January 19, 1951

Settling in the region of Moret in the early 1880s, Sisley found the rivers in the area to be especially attractive and inspiring.  At Saint-Mammès, the rivers Loing and Seine converged, providing the artist with a number of riverside views that would come to define his personal approach to Impressionism.  Only a short distance from Veneux-Nadon, to which he had moved in 1880, the picturesque setting of the village became the subject of numerous paintings in the 1880s.

Camille Mauclair wrote about Sisley in 1912: "He is the painter of great blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered about; he is beyond all, the painter of French skies which he presents with admirable vivacity and facility.  He has the feeling for transparency of atmosphere" (quoted in Mary Anne Stevens (ed.), Alfred Sisley, London, 1992, p. 24).  The present work illustrates Mauclair's praise for the artist, as he combines the shimmering surface of the river and the brilliant expanse of the sky.