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PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION, OFFERED FOR SALE UNDER THE TERMS OF AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CURRENT POSSESSORS AND THE HEIRS OF MAX SILBERBERG, BRESLAU

1839-1899
LA SEINE À SAINT-MAMMÈS

measurements
54.7 by 73.2cm.

alternate measurements
21 1/2 by 28 3/4 in.

Painted in 1885.

signed Sisley and dated 85 (lower right)

oil on canvas

To be included in the new edition of Catalogue raisonné de l'~uvre d'Alfred Sisley by François Daulte being prepared by the Comité Alfred Sisley.

PROVENANCE

Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 20^th February 1908, lot 39
Léon Payen, Paris (sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 29^th & 30^th June 1916, lot 105)
Mrs Simon (purchased at the above sale)
Max Silberberg, Breslau
Sale: Paul Graupe, Berlin, 25^th March 1935, lot 29 (titled Flusslandschaft and as dating from 1888; forced sale of Jewish property)
Private Collection, Europe

LITERATURE

Kunst und Künstler, Berlin, 1923, vol. XXI, illustrated p. 133
Karl Scheffler, Kunst und Künstler, Berlin, 1931, vol. XXX, p. 3 (as dating from 1888)
François Daulte, Alfred Sisley. Catalogue raisonné de l'~uvre peint, Lausanne, 1959, no. 621, illustrated

NOTE

Painted in 1885, the present composition depicts the landscape around Saint-Mammès, a small village situated at the confluence of the rivers Seine and Loing, just north of Moret-sur-Loing. Sisley first moved with his family to Veneux-Nadon near Moret-sur-Loing in 1880, and continued to live in that area for the rest of his life, moving several times between the two villages. The local scenery offered a constant source of inspiration to the artist, who tried to capture the relationship between land, water and sky as well as the changing effects of light on his surroundings. Having painted numerous views of the bridge, river bank and quayside of Saint-Mammès in 1880-81, Sisley focused his attention on the Seine at Saint-Mammès, and between 1882 and 1885 executed a series of works depicting the water in different seasons and times of day.

For the present work, Sisley set his easel across the river from Saint-Mammès, giving him a receding view of the river and the houses lining up the bank. The central horizontal strip of the composition is occupied by the trees on the left, the bridge in the middle, and the houses on the right bank, while the major part of the canvas is taken up by the sky scattered with clouds, and their reflection in the wide expanse of the river. In her discussion of Sisley's paintings executed in this region, Vivienne Couldrey noted: 'It is an essentially Impressionist place with the gentle light of the Ile de France, the soft colours and the constantly changing skies of northern France. There are green woods and pastures, curving tree-lined banks of rivers, canals and narrow streams, wide stretches of the river where the Loing joins the Seine at Saint-Mammès, old stone houses, churches and bridges' (V. Couldrey, Alfred Sisley, The English Impressionist, Exeter, 1992, p. 68).

The village of Saint-Mammès was ideally situated on the confluence of the two rivers, seventy kilometres upstream from Paris. As the meeting point of all the waterways crossing central France, from its earliest days the town's fortunes were inextricably linked with the river. Thanks to its strategic location, it became one of the foremost centres of barge activity in the region, and for a long time played a significant role in the history of the inland waterways. Although Sisley never lived in the village of Saint-Mammès, he was certainly attracted to this region, and to the painterly possibilities it offered him. As the critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in 1923: 'He sought to express the harmonies that prevail, in all weathers and at every time of day, between foliage, water and sky, and he succeeded [...] He loved river banks; the fringes of woodland; towns and villages glimpsed through the old trees; old buildings swamped in greenery; winter morning sunlight; summer afternoons' (G. Geffroy, 'Sisley', in Les Cahiers d'Aujourd'hui, Paris, 1923).

Sisley, like Monet, continued to explore and develop the Impressionist style during the 1880s and 1890s. It was towards the end of the 1870s that his brushwork became more vigorous and the palette more varied. The brushwork in the present work is wonderfully fluid, its rhythmical application of paint so typical of many of the oils dating from the late 1870s and the 1880s. Richard Shone wrote: 'Sisley worked in all seasons and weathers along this beautiful and still unspoilt bank of the Seine. Its topography gave him new configurations of space in which far horizons combined with plunging views below; the horizontals of skyline, riverbank and receding path are overlaid by emphatic verticals and diagonals to produce densely structured surfaces. This becomes particularly evident in his landscapes painted in winter or early spring, before summer foliage obscured these far-reaching lines of vision. It is then, too, that Sisley's skies assume a greater variety and grandeur. With more subtlety than before, he determines the exact relation of the sky to the silhouette of the land. He knows how to differentiate its planes, order its clouds, diminish or enlarge its scope to produce a harmony inseparable from the landscape below' (R. Shone, Sisley, London, 1992, p. 135).