"Moret is two hours journey from Paris, and has
plenty of places to let at six hundred to a thousand
francs. There is a market once a week, a pretty
church, and beautiful scenery round about. If you were
thinking of moving, why not come and see? Veneux-Nadon
is about ten minutes from Moret station." Thus,
briefly and to the point, Sisley wrote to Claude Monet
on August 31st, 1881, to try to persuade his friend to
join him and settle down on the banks of the river
Loing. Sisley had already spent a year at Veneux-
Nadon, where the green fields and peaceful atmosphere
delighted him. He was scarcely ever to leave it
again. In September, 1882, he decided to move a little
nearer to Moret, and rented a small house on the
outskirts of town, near the edge of the forest of
Fontainebleau. He was enthralled, even by the fields
round his own garden. "The weather has been wonderful,"
he wrote to Dr. de Bellio on April 18th, 1883. "I
have started to work again, but unfortunately, because
it has been such a dry spring, the fruit trees are not
flowering all at once, and the blossoms are dropping
very quickly. And I am trying to paint them! A
landscape painter's calling is no bed of roses. This
morning the wind was so strong that I had to give up,
and now it is clouding over. Still, in a way it is a
good thing, because I have time to write you...."

During his years at Moret and its environs Sisley
often painted several studies of a theme done at
different times of day, and at different seasons.
About 1888 the painter turned his attention to the
town of Moret itself. He studied the towers, the
alleys, and the houses with their over-hanging roofs
dominated by the church steeple. Sometimes he
painted the little town as it lay sleeping in the
sun beside the Loing, with the Provencher mill and
the arches of the bridge reflected in the water. At
times he concentrated no longer on the buildings,
and the interest of the picture is in the surface of
the water, and in the river banks covered with green
and yellow reeds, with the roofs of Moret, lit by
the setting sun in the distance. But whatever aspect
he chose--water, mill, or trees--Sisley always
painted magnificent skies, which often occupy half
the composition. Corot called Boudin "the king of the
skies," but Sisley was also worthy of the title. He
was always preoccupied with the sky, trying to catch
the smallest change at all hours and seasons. (exh.
cat., Sisley, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 1966)