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Lot Essay
Alfred Sisley’s La Seine à Suresnes is a tranquil landscape from a turning point in the artist’s life, as he adjusted his style and reflected on the subject of painting. The work was created in 1879, following the artist’s move to Sèvres with his long-term partner Eugénie Lescouezec and their two children. The small suburb, known for its famed porcelain factory, would feature on numerous canvases depicting its romantic Pont de Sèvres and quais. Celebrating the scenic charm of a provincial village’s riverbank, the present work depicts the river Seine as it makes its way through Suresnes, a suburban commune just west of Paris bordering the Bois de Boulogne. It displays Sisley’s marked fascination with the quiet meandering of the river’s tributaries across the towns and countryside of the Île de France, assiduously portraying the fundamental character of the region. Although the period spent at Sèvres and its environs was one of significant financial hardships for Sisley and his family, it was also a period of unparalleled creative success. As the art historian Christopher Lloyd noted, "During the years when Sisley lived in Marly-le-Roi and Sèvres, he painted some of the finest pictures in his oeuvre" (Alfred Sisley, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1992, p. 149).
Sisley’s contemporaries flocked to the small towns along the Seine, emboldened by the opportunity to depict the river as a place of leisure while remining close to the city and its dealers and gallerists. Sèvres was conveniently close and accessible to the heart of the capital, although less popular with the holidaymakers who were eager to escape the bustle of the modern metropolis. Industrialization was permeating the town, and its section of the river was used primarily as a source of commerce, with teaming barges carrying goods docking at the port on the opposite bank at Billancourt. Sisley’s move there allowed him to explore more thoroughly the dissonance of the relationship between nature and industry, emblematic of the Impressionist drive to depict the modernity of their age. Setting himself apart from other artists of the movement, however, he painted every aspect of the landscape, avoiding the conventionally picturesque and preferring to focus on the quietly charming scenes of everyday life. The art historian Richard Brettel commented: “More than any other Impressionist, Sisley was fascinated by the complexity of river life. Less interested in pleasure craft and their passengers than his friend [Claude] Monet, Sisley preferred to render the economically important boat life of the Seine—from ferries to flat barges and motor tugs” (A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984, p. 102).
La Seine à Suresnes not only highlights Sisley’s interest in the various aspects of modernity; its subject allowed the artist to represent transient elements such as clouds and plumes of smoke, and the effects of the dull light and chill of a serene afternoon in late fall. The work underscores Sisley’s maintained distance from industrialization, dutifully depicting its influence on the landscape yet never succumbing to it entirely. This is conveyed by the all-encompassing presence of the expansive sky—the expressive, luminous brushstrokes give the painting a vibrancy which infuses the scene with quiet potency. As in much of Sisley’s oeuvre, the ephemeral nature of the sky, with its captivating, ever-changing shift of sunlight and clouds governs the scene and possesses a fundamental role in the painting. As he wrote to his friend, the critic Adolphe Tavernier: “The sky is not simply a background; its planes give depth (for the sky has planes, as well as the solid ground), and the shapes of clouds give movement to a picture. What is more beautiful indeed than the summer sky, with its wispy clouds idly floating across the blue? What movement and grace!" (quoted in "The Impressionists" in Art News, vol. 67, no. 9, January 1969).
La Seine à Suresnes reflects a change in Sisley’s style discernable in his work from the period. Although he remained true to central tenets of Impressionism during this time, working en plein air and concentrating on capturing light, color, and atmosphere, the present work reflects a greater degree of variety which he infused into his technique. The gently rendered square brushstrokes which resulted in the even surfaces of his earlier works are replaced here by a quiet vitality created by heavily-worked, more elaborate surfaces and a range of free, vigorous brushstrokes. Alongside the heightened tactile quality of works from this time was a greater complexity in the application of color, and La Seine à Suresnes reflects his growing interest in exploring vivid tones and complementary palettes.
Sisley painted another version of the present view in 1880, a picture of the same name which forms part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The auburn tinge of the leaves, however, is replaced here by the harsh chill of winter, with the scene taking on a more somber palette and lacking the vibrant expressiveness of the present painting. Although Sèvres and its surroundings contained all the elements the artist favored—the river, the park, and the confluence of the historic and the modern—his stay in the area was brief, and these scenes perhaps mark his farewell to the Parisian suburbs. In early 1880, shortly after painting them, the artist and his small family moved further away from Paris, to the more rural town of Moret-sur-Loing, where he would spend the final two decades of his life.
La Seine à Suresnes has distinguished provenance, having previously been in the collection of Jules-Emile Boivin, a French industrialist with a discerning eye for Impressionism. Through his close friendship with Edgard Degas and the illustrious dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, Boivin acquired exceptional works from the period, some of which are now in distinguished institutions. The work was later in the collection of Sam Salz, a notable American art dealer and collector of modern art. Works from Salz’s collection are now housed in The Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Sisley’s contemporaries flocked to the small towns along the Seine, emboldened by the opportunity to depict the river as a place of leisure while remining close to the city and its dealers and gallerists. Sèvres was conveniently close and accessible to the heart of the capital, although less popular with the holidaymakers who were eager to escape the bustle of the modern metropolis. Industrialization was permeating the town, and its section of the river was used primarily as a source of commerce, with teaming barges carrying goods docking at the port on the opposite bank at Billancourt. Sisley’s move there allowed him to explore more thoroughly the dissonance of the relationship between nature and industry, emblematic of the Impressionist drive to depict the modernity of their age. Setting himself apart from other artists of the movement, however, he painted every aspect of the landscape, avoiding the conventionally picturesque and preferring to focus on the quietly charming scenes of everyday life. The art historian Richard Brettel commented: “More than any other Impressionist, Sisley was fascinated by the complexity of river life. Less interested in pleasure craft and their passengers than his friend [Claude] Monet, Sisley preferred to render the economically important boat life of the Seine—from ferries to flat barges and motor tugs” (A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984, p. 102).
La Seine à Suresnes not only highlights Sisley’s interest in the various aspects of modernity; its subject allowed the artist to represent transient elements such as clouds and plumes of smoke, and the effects of the dull light and chill of a serene afternoon in late fall. The work underscores Sisley’s maintained distance from industrialization, dutifully depicting its influence on the landscape yet never succumbing to it entirely. This is conveyed by the all-encompassing presence of the expansive sky—the expressive, luminous brushstrokes give the painting a vibrancy which infuses the scene with quiet potency. As in much of Sisley’s oeuvre, the ephemeral nature of the sky, with its captivating, ever-changing shift of sunlight and clouds governs the scene and possesses a fundamental role in the painting. As he wrote to his friend, the critic Adolphe Tavernier: “The sky is not simply a background; its planes give depth (for the sky has planes, as well as the solid ground), and the shapes of clouds give movement to a picture. What is more beautiful indeed than the summer sky, with its wispy clouds idly floating across the blue? What movement and grace!" (quoted in "The Impressionists" in Art News, vol. 67, no. 9, January 1969).
La Seine à Suresnes reflects a change in Sisley’s style discernable in his work from the period. Although he remained true to central tenets of Impressionism during this time, working en plein air and concentrating on capturing light, color, and atmosphere, the present work reflects a greater degree of variety which he infused into his technique. The gently rendered square brushstrokes which resulted in the even surfaces of his earlier works are replaced here by a quiet vitality created by heavily-worked, more elaborate surfaces and a range of free, vigorous brushstrokes. Alongside the heightened tactile quality of works from this time was a greater complexity in the application of color, and La Seine à Suresnes reflects his growing interest in exploring vivid tones and complementary palettes.
Sisley painted another version of the present view in 1880, a picture of the same name which forms part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The auburn tinge of the leaves, however, is replaced here by the harsh chill of winter, with the scene taking on a more somber palette and lacking the vibrant expressiveness of the present painting. Although Sèvres and its surroundings contained all the elements the artist favored—the river, the park, and the confluence of the historic and the modern—his stay in the area was brief, and these scenes perhaps mark his farewell to the Parisian suburbs. In early 1880, shortly after painting them, the artist and his small family moved further away from Paris, to the more rural town of Moret-sur-Loing, where he would spend the final two decades of his life.
La Seine à Suresnes has distinguished provenance, having previously been in the collection of Jules-Emile Boivin, a French industrialist with a discerning eye for Impressionism. Through his close friendship with Edgard Degas and the illustrious dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, Boivin acquired exceptional works from the period, some of which are now in distinguished institutions. The work was later in the collection of Sam Salz, a notable American art dealer and collector of modern art. Works from Salz’s collection are now housed in The Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.