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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE CHARLES AND MARY DUGAN-CHAPMAN, LONDON

1839-1899
LA SEINE À PORT-MARLY

measurements
32 by 41cm.

alternate measurements
12 5/8 by 16 1/8 in.

Painted in 1879.

signed Sisley (lower left)

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

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired on 5th November 1890)
Jacques Dubourg, Paris (acquired from the above on 14th July 1936)
Colonel Stanley Cohen
Private Collection, Paris
R. M. Simon (1963)
The Lefevre Gallery (Alex Reid & Lefevre, Ltd.), London
Acquired from the above by the late owners in 1985

EXHIBITED

London, Grafton Galleries, Paintings by Boudin, Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Sisley, 1905, no. 284 (titled The Loing Canal)
New York, Gallery Durand-Ruel, Pissarro and Sisley, 1928, no. 14
London, Wildenstein Galleries, The French Impressionists and Some of their Contemporaries, 1963, no. 29, illustrated in the catalogue

LITERATURE

François Daulte, Alfred Sisley. Catalogue raisonné de l'~uvre peint, Lausanne, 1959, no. 326, illustrated

NOTE

After the Prussian siege of Paris in 1871, Sisley decided to move with his family to the village of Louveciennes, situated on the river Seine, about thirty kilometres west of the capital, and in the winter of 1874 they moved to the neighbouring Marly-le-Roy. During his time there, Sisley painted a number of scenes of the village and its winding streets. He was particularly fascinated by the beauty of the Seine valley, and took delight in painting this new environment, trying to capture the effects of the season, weather and time of day on the countryside, and experimenting with the effects of light and colour.

As he ceased to exhibit at the Salon after 1877, Sisley's art of the following years shows a considerable change in style. Freed from the constraints of the existing canon, his compositions became more complex, with less emphasis on recession and perspective, and a shift towards the expressive power of his brushstrokes and interlocking patterns. La Seine à Port-Marly is a remarkable example of this newly found spontaneity in application of paint: the artist builds his composition by placing layers of pigment on top of each other, applied in quick brushstrokes in varying directions, and in this way creates a richly textured surface saturated with colour.

Writing about Sisley's paintings executed in this region, Vivienne Couldrey observed: 'In the area of Louveciennes along the valley of the Seine he found waiting for him the kind of landscape he was to love all his life. Westward from Paris the Seine winds in large loops through Suresnes, Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Argenteuil, Bougival, Sèvres, Ville d'Avray, Louveciennes, Noisy-le-Roi, Port-Marly; the villages are strung along the river, clustered around Versailles. It is an area rich in historical associations. The Sun King, Louis XIV, chose to make Marly a haven of rural peace and repose to escape from the intrigues and power struggles of Versailles, but he imposed on its simple life the formal landscaping and monumental magnificence of his era' (V. Couldrey, Alfred Sisley, The English Impressionist, Exeter, 1992, p. 33).