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Lot Essay
The present landscape is one of seventeen that Sisley painted during a visit to England between June and October of 1874. He was accompanied by the renowned baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, who had begun collecting Impressionist paintings the previous year. Faure had singing engagements in London and agreed to finance Sisley's trip in exchange for six of the canvases produced during their stay, including the present one. Unlike Monet and Pissarro, who focused on urban subjects when they traveled to England in the early 1870s, Sisley painted only a single view of central London. Instead, he retreated to Hampton Court, the site of a royal palace and a popular leisure resort just west of the capital. Nearly two decades later, in an autobiographical letter to the critic Adolphe Tavernier, Sisley remembered his sojourn there: "I spent several months at Hampton Court, near London, where I did several important studies. I am not sure if you know it, it is a charming place" (quoted in R. Shone, op. cit., p. 67). Modern scholars too have recognized the importance of Sisley's work from Hampton Court. Kenneth Clark writes that the artist achieved there "a perfect moment of Impressionism" (Landscape into Art, Harmondsworth, 1969, p. 100), while François Daulte asserts, "During this period, Sisley did some of his most spontaneous and luminous work" (op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1966, n.p.).
According to Mary Anne Stevens (op. cit., p. 136), La route de Hampton Court forms part of a progression of views that Sisley painted on the south bank of the Thames, looking upstream. In the first canvas in the sequence (D. 120; Neue Pinakothek, Munich), the artist set up his easel immediately west of the bridge linking Hampton Court to East Molesey and depicted the sweep of road leading to Molesey Lock. In the next painting, Sisley has moved nearer to the lock (D. 119; Egyptian State Collection), while in La route de Hampton Court, he leads the viewer up the lock's canalized entrance, with the barge walk on the left. From here, Sisley painted a close-up view of the Molesey dam (D. 118; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), before moving further upstream to produce a panoramic vista of the Thames with the village of Hampton in the distance (D. 117; Private Collection). This systematic method of "mapping" the places where he lived was a distinctive feature of Sisley's work, beginning at Louveciennes in 1871-1872 and concluding at Moret in the final decade of his career.
With its loose brushwork and bright palette, the present painting exudes the festive, holiday atmosphere of a breezy summer afternoon. Elegantly dressed figures promenade along the walkway and small sailboats skim across the sparkling surface of the water. Describing the scene, Richard Shone writes, "Below a conventionally placed horizon line, allowing two-thirds sky, one third land and water, Sisley compresses a finely segmented design of river, path and bank with an engaging counterpoint of fences, bollards, mooring posts and flagpoles. The foregrounds are frequently wide open (allowing Sisley scope for the beautiful peach-ochre color of the sandy tow-path); perspectives rush backwards, animated by these man-made demarcations and briskly annotated figures. They work on the surface as spatial markers and accents of color; at the same time, they act as abbreviated pointers to organized sport and leisure, around which flow the more spontaneous ingredients of a society at ease" (op. cit., p. 70).
According to Mary Anne Stevens (op. cit., p. 136), La route de Hampton Court forms part of a progression of views that Sisley painted on the south bank of the Thames, looking upstream. In the first canvas in the sequence (D. 120; Neue Pinakothek, Munich), the artist set up his easel immediately west of the bridge linking Hampton Court to East Molesey and depicted the sweep of road leading to Molesey Lock. In the next painting, Sisley has moved nearer to the lock (D. 119; Egyptian State Collection), while in La route de Hampton Court, he leads the viewer up the lock's canalized entrance, with the barge walk on the left. From here, Sisley painted a close-up view of the Molesey dam (D. 118; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), before moving further upstream to produce a panoramic vista of the Thames with the village of Hampton in the distance (D. 117; Private Collection). This systematic method of "mapping" the places where he lived was a distinctive feature of Sisley's work, beginning at Louveciennes in 1871-1872 and concluding at Moret in the final decade of his career.
With its loose brushwork and bright palette, the present painting exudes the festive, holiday atmosphere of a breezy summer afternoon. Elegantly dressed figures promenade along the walkway and small sailboats skim across the sparkling surface of the water. Describing the scene, Richard Shone writes, "Below a conventionally placed horizon line, allowing two-thirds sky, one third land and water, Sisley compresses a finely segmented design of river, path and bank with an engaging counterpoint of fences, bollards, mooring posts and flagpoles. The foregrounds are frequently wide open (allowing Sisley scope for the beautiful peach-ochre color of the sandy tow-path); perspectives rush backwards, animated by these man-made demarcations and briskly annotated figures. They work on the surface as spatial markers and accents of color; at the same time, they act as abbreviated pointers to organized sport and leisure, around which flow the more spontaneous ingredients of a society at ease" (op. cit., p. 70).