Art e Dossier

In the early eighteen-seventies Sisley’s pictorial language was directly oriented towards the Impressionists’ mode of portraying a real, rather than idealized, landscape, and this would always be the preferred theme of all his work. Specifically, his interest would focus on the treatment of the sky and water, following the lessons of Daubigny and Corot. Like Monet who, between 1872 and 1876, painted riverbanks, regattas and other leisure pastimes in the vicinity of the village of Argenteuil, during those same years, Sisley, too, devoted his attention to similar subjects in the villages of Villeneuve-la-Garenne and Bougival, on the banks of the Seine. In this painting, one of the most famous by the main who, in 1873, was defined as the “most harmonious and most timid” of the Impressionists, the palette has perfectly harmonized tones and the brushstroke is precise in the portrayal of the bridge on the left which serves as a side set for the composition: the village houses illuminated by the strong morning light, and above all, the sky furrowed by clouds and the water where the brushstroke seems to fray in creating the yellow and green reflections of light.

Like John Constable, the romantic English landscape artist who constantly painted places to which he was linked by profound personal experiences, Sisley too chose the villages near the Seine where he had stayed as his subjects. This painting portrays the road that runs along the Seine to supply water to the grand gardens of the chateaux of Marly and Versailles, from the Machine up the steep Rue La Machine, to the aqueduct of Louveciennes and the troughs of Marly-le-Roy. In The Machine at Marly Sisley used a precise brushstroke in describing the shapes and a clean, steady and topographic drawing. We can see the originality of his hand in the colored reflections on the water and the “disorderly” effects of the light where the dominant yellow blends with the white and blue of the air in a sense of real and essential depth.

Sisley also painted this canvas during his stay near Hampton Court between July and October 1874. The composition seems particularly simplified in a horizontal shape, with quick, brief brushstrokes and little shading. In the ‘seventies, the approximate and immediate style of this painting would alternate with a certain prevalence with the more melancholy and sfumato style typical of his earlier works. One probable explanation is that while at the beginning he painted solely on inspiration later he worked without creative urgency, forced to do so by his loss of income and the need to provide for his family. Hence the use of colors like blue, brown and bright white, free and heavy brushstroke, lacking in grace and fineness. The white, cloud-filled sky, however, continues to play a fundamental role and occupy a large portion of the painted surface. As Sisley wrote to the critic Adolphe Tavernier: “The sky cannot be a mere background. On the contrary, it contributes to the paining with the depth of its planes (because it has planes just like the earth). Its shapes and organization, in harmony with the effect or composition of the painting, create the sense of movement.”

Louveciennes, the village on the banks of the Seine, west of Paris, was where Sisley lived from 1872 to 1874, was the most frequent subject of his paintings during that period. In summer and winter he explored the houses, tree-shaded streets and closed gardens. Like Monet, Sisley began to study the way colors and shapes changed with the hours and seasons, and repeated the same subject. This snow-covered garden, with a figure carrying an open umbrella exists a summer version, done the same year, with fully greenery and the small figure with the umbrella is seen from the back in a more static pose. Snow, a subject painted by Monet as well, made it possible to study the changes and effects of light, using different shades of the palette on an uneven background with bluish reflections as if the luminous white of the snow reflected all the other colors and all possible shades of the sky, trees and houses. Nature in winter triggered a contemplative feeling, dominated by silence and concentration which the artist captured in the simple poetry of a short, immediate space.

This, the first version of the Flood at Port-Marly, is the prelude to other paintings in 1876 (one of which was shown at the second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876), following the real experience of the Seine floods that year. Here, perhaps, the atmosphere is less real and more poetic as it portrays that suspended ambiguity played out in tones of grey that take over the devastating flood. Near the St-Nicolas restaurant there are small black figures on a boat, and two small female figures at the entrance to the building. But what is most striking is the intensity of the entire space that creates a cold chromatic harmony of grays, blues, pink, yellows and light browns. The sky and water are reflected in each other in a vision that balances imagination and reality. In 1892 Mirbeau wrote about Sisley: “In his painting there is more charm than energy, an innate grace, something that is reserved, attractive and not displayed, its fineness was live and gave the unsaid an exquisite poetry.”

When the Seine flooded in 1876 it inundated some of the villages along its banks such as Port-Marly or Marly-le-Roy. Sisley, who happened to be living in the area, hastened to paint the event and recorded it in six pieces. With immediacy and passion he began to study the flood and construct a pictorial vision. The surface of the canvas comprises three vertical sections: the one on the left closed by the colored building, on the right it opens beyond the limit of the thin trees, while the central portion is taken up by the boats and a hint of the sole human presence which is relatively unimportant in the overall structure. The main element of the clear and luminous composition, where nothing evokes the drama of the event, is the stretch of reflecting water beneath an already blue sky, with its furrows of white clouds. The true protagonists of this canvas are the short, horizontal brushstrokes that describe the yellow, green and blue reflections on the water capturing the colors and lights of the house, the trees and the atmosphere of the scene.

During the eighteen-eighties, concurrently with the so-called “crisis of Impressionism” all the protagonists of the movement who were criticized for their unstable and ephemeral interpretations of nature withdrew to work in studios, seeking more intense colors and dramatic effects. Sisley, however, reiterated the need to work en plein air looking at his subject. Therefore, he tried to remedy the instability of the Impressionist view by adopting, for example, a special expedient. In this case it was the barrier of trees in the foreground, letting the landscape sink into the background, either in depth or horizontally suggesting continuity beyond the edge of the canvas. This Orchard in Spring that he painted when passing through By uses this device to give the scene motion and liveliness, animated as it is by the light breaking down from left to right with the almost imperceptible human presence of a little girl swinging on a branch in the foreground and a mother with a smaller boy in the background and in the middle of the composition.

Ernest Hoschedé (1838-1890), businessman and collector had his estate at Montgeron, just outside Paris. He was one of the first admirers of the Impressionists and friend, mainly of Monet. That man went to Hoschedé’s house often enough to fall in love with his wife, Alice who was to become the artist’s mistress. In this view of the garden, seen from above – as from a window – Sisley opted not to portray the vastness of the sky and filled the space with the yellow, orange and brown of the trees with quick, short and heavy brushstrokes, and with warm colors and luminous contrasts. In the foreground the shadow (which is never black in Impressionist paintings) darkens the green of the lawn, taking on tones of blue, lilac and purple in contrast with the bright yellow and green of the part illuminated by the sun that sparkles with light, vibrant reflections.

There is graphic study for this painting in the album of Sisley’s drawings in the Louvre. The drawing allows us to date the canvas in the fall of 1883 when the artist, who was very lonely and in financial straits, moved to Moret along the banks of the Loing. Here, he gradually became acquainted with the structure of the town, the riverbanks, and the bridge with its picturesque watermills, and began painting them all quite effectively. Early in the ‘eighties Sisley’s work became more charged and agitated. The brushstroke was particularly graphic and rich, able to convey feeling and the general view gained in power and motion, while yielding up clarity and contemplation. The dominant blue (along with the white of the light) serves to modify and bring the various shades into harmony and homogeneity within the picture.

Sisley did a series of four paintings of the village of Saint-Mammès located on the banks of the Seine, not far from Moret-sur-Loing, with four different views from the other side of the river. In these views of Saint-Mammès, which includes this one dated 1885, the sky is highly emphasized offering a relationship with the general light of the composition. Adolphe Tavernier wrote in 1893: “I have already said that Sisley begins all his paintings with the sky and only when he is satisfied with it will he continue his work. His skies have a special charm, and we can readily understand that the artist “feels them before he portrays them.” Here the scene has great depth and the sky serves to draw the gaze to the horizon line to then make it move to foreground where the green, yellow, blue, white and lilac create a fascinating play of reflections on the water. Even the bushes no longer have a definite shape and become splashes of light and close, nervous brushstrokes that seem to clot a considerable amount of color.

During the eighteen-nineties Sisley, like Monet and Pissarro, explored the principle of the series, that is rendering a single subject under different weather conditions and at different times of day. Between 1893 and 1894 he did a series of about eleven paintings of the Gothic parish church at Moret-sur-Loing, at the same time that Claude Monet was working on the series of the western façade of the Rouen cathedral that he had begun in 1892 and showed at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1895. Sisley was probably acquainted with the Rouen Cathedral series because he had been to the city twice early in the spring of 1893, and exactly where Monet was working. The effect of Sisley’s series, however, is very different from what Monet achieved because the stone façade of the church at Moret-sur-Loing never loses its material architectural power. It does not break-up when it makes contact with the atmosphere and light, rather the play of reflections and shadows reinforces the naturalism of the view and monumentality of the building.