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Lot Essay
Although Sisley was not to settle in Saint-Mammès until 1883, he completed fifteen paintings in or around the town in 1880 while he was living near Moret at Veneux-Nadon. The small port town of Saint-Mammès is situated at the meeting place of the rivers Seine and Loing southeast of Paris. Here, in the heart of the Ile-de-France, the landscape was generally flat, with gently rolling hills in the distance.
La berge à Saint-Mammès reflects Sisley's skill at rendering the soft colours of the blossoming meadow and the changing skies. So, too, his skill at capturing vibrant reflections in the river recall Monet's most successful landscapes of the period: 'He has a similar delicacy of perception', wrote Camille Mauclair in 1912, 'a similar fervour of execution. He is the painter of the great blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered about; he is beyond all, the painter of French skies, which he presents with admirable vivacity and facility. He has the feeling for the transparency of the atmosphere' (quoted in C. Lloyd, exh. cat. Alfred Sisley, London, 1992, p. 24).
La berge à Saint-Mammès reflects Sisley's skill at rendering the soft colours of the blossoming meadow and the changing skies. So, too, his skill at capturing vibrant reflections in the river recall Monet's most successful landscapes of the period: 'He has a similar delicacy of perception', wrote Camille Mauclair in 1912, 'a similar fervour of execution. He is the painter of the great blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered about; he is beyond all, the painter of French skies, which he presents with admirable vivacity and facility. He has the feeling for the transparency of the atmosphere' (quoted in C. Lloyd, exh. cat. Alfred Sisley, London, 1992, p. 24).