拍品專文
In the autumn of 1883, Sisley settled in Saint-Mammès, a small village close to the junction where the rivers Seine and Loing meet, twenty miles south-east of Paris. Between 1882 and 1885 he executed a series of works from different vantage points along the banks of the Loing, depicting the innumerable types of river craft which made up the life of the river: "the picturesque berrichon, the flat-bottomed margota used for the haulage and the predominant péniche, a large multi-purpose barge" (R. Shone, op. cit., p. 148). The present painting depicts the point where the Seine and the Loing join together, with the Customs House and the locks on the right and a bank of wind-blown vegetation on the left.
Sisley's chief concern in this series was to capture the landscape at different times of the day and during different seasons. 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 trees; old buildings swamped in greenery; winter morning sunlight; summer afternoons. (G. Geffroy, "Sisley," Les Cahiers d'Aujourd'hui, 1923)
And another critic, writing in the Paris Journal in the 1880s, similarly remarked:
Sisley has masterfully taken possession of the banks and waters of the Seine where the breeze, like a moving mirror, splinters into a reflections of light, fleecy clouds. (E. Chesneau, Paris Journal, March 7, 1882)
The best pictures of the Saint-Mammès series, the present painting among them, are drenched in sunlight, with large, bright skies. In this work, as in other pictures of the year, Sisley's brushstrokes are loose and lively; and his color contrasts retain the palette and vitality of Neo- Impressionism, the orange and red of the roofs and the decorations on the barge, for example, contrasting sharply with the intense blue of the sky. As Sisley himself commented not long after painting the present scene, "Objects should be rendered with their own textures and above all, they should be bathed in light as they are in nature. This is what we should be striving to achieve. The sky itself is the medium" (V. Couldry, Alfred Sisley: The English Impressionist, London, 1992, p. 71).
Sisley's chief concern in this series was to capture the landscape at different times of the day and during different seasons. 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 trees; old buildings swamped in greenery; winter morning sunlight; summer afternoons. (G. Geffroy, "Sisley," Les Cahiers d'Aujourd'hui, 1923)
And another critic, writing in the Paris Journal in the 1880s, similarly remarked:
Sisley has masterfully taken possession of the banks and waters of the Seine where the breeze, like a moving mirror, splinters into a reflections of light, fleecy clouds. (E. Chesneau, Paris Journal, March 7, 1882)
The best pictures of the Saint-Mammès series, the present painting among them, are drenched in sunlight, with large, bright skies. In this work, as in other pictures of the year, Sisley's brushstrokes are loose and lively; and his color contrasts retain the palette and vitality of Neo- Impressionism, the orange and red of the roofs and the decorations on the barge, for example, contrasting sharply with the intense blue of the sky. As Sisley himself commented not long after painting the present scene, "Objects should be rendered with their own textures and above all, they should be bathed in light as they are in nature. This is what we should be striving to achieve. The sky itself is the medium" (V. Couldry, Alfred Sisley: The English Impressionist, London, 1992, p. 71).