Alfred Sisley

Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris

Durand-Ruel, Paris (on deposit from the above between 1884 and 1886 and later purchased from him on August 11, 1888)

Jean d’Alayer, Paris (acquired from the above in the 1950s)

Sam Salz, New York (acquired from the above in 1959)

Martin J. and Sidney A. Zimet, New York (by 1962)

Sale: Sotheby's, London, October 23, 1963, lot 1

Arthur Tooth & Sons, Ltd., London

Acquired from the above on February 2, 1967

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition Sisley, 1897, no. 65

Saint Petersburg, Exposition française des Beaux-Arts et Décoratifs, 1899, no. 343

Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Sisley, 1902, no. 8

Copenhagen, Musée Royal, Exposition d'Art Français du XIXe siècle, 1914, no. 201

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Summer Loan Exhibition, 1962, no. 88 (title Landscape near Saint-Mammès)

New York, Acquavella Galleries, Four Masters of Impressionism, 1968, no. 27

V. Pica, Gli Impressionisti francesi, Bergamo, 1908, illustrated p. 139

François Daulte, Alfred Sisley, Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint, Lausanne, 1959, no. 370, illustrated

Saint-Mammès lies at the confluence of the Seine and the Loing rivers, just south of the Fontainebleau Forest.  Sisley, who at the time lived in nearby Veneux-Nadon, was drawn to the charm of the village and painted different views of Saint-Mammès throughout the 1880s.  The most stylistically sophisticated works from this series are his depictions of the log piles from a nearby lumber mill.  The present canvas, which is one of the first of these depictions, reveals the unexpected charm of this subject.

Writing about a very similar work (Daulte no. 371), Philip Conisbee provides us with the following information:  "Sisley painted over a hundred scenes of Saint-Mammès; in several of these he employed a similar composition of a receding road bordered on one side by houses and on the other by trees and a view of the river.  Chestnut trees, such as the isolated one seen here, featured prominently in the town landscape...The large expanse of the subtly rendered sky distinguishes many of Sisley's finest paintings;  he was constantly preoccupied with capturing the effects of light and changing weather.  The meticulous, intricate brushwork is typical of Sisley around 1880, but unlike Monet, his forms always remained distant masses" (Philip Conisbee, Rodin and his Contemporaries: The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1991, p. 160).