Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)

In the Autumn of 1883, Sisley settled in Saint-Mamms, a small village close to the junction of the rivers Seine and Loing, twenty miles south-east of Paris. The beauty of the area is well chronicled, "It is an essentially Impressionist place with the gentle light of the Ile-de-France, the soft colours and the constantly changing skies of Northern France. There are green woods and pastures, curving tree-lined banks of rivers, canals, and narrow streams, wide stretches of river where the Loing joins the Seine at Saint-Mamms, old stone houses, churches and bridges" (V. Couldrey, Alfred Sisley: The English Impressionist, Exeter, 1992, p. 68).

For approximately ten years scenes of the rivers Seine and Loing remained Sisley's chief inspiration of which exist at least sixty recorded landscapes done in this locale.