Alfred Sisley

J.-B. Faure, Paris

Mme Faure, Paris

Durand-Ruel, Paris (on deposit from the above in 1918)

Durand-Ruel, New York and Galerie Georges Petit, Paris (purchased from Mme Faure on August 30, 1919)

Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Sale: Christie's New York: Tuesday, May 10, 1994, lot 25

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Alfred Sisley, 1897, no. 72

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Alfred Sisley, 1917, no. 52

Notice sur la Collection J.-B. Faure, Paris, 1902, no. 109, p. 54

Gustave Geffroy, Sisley, Paris, 1927, illustrated pl. 23

François Daulte, Sisley, Lausanne, 1959, no. 667, illustrated

During the 1880s Sisley painted a series of works from different vantage points along the banks of the Loing.  One of his favorite spots was Moret, a village whose appeal, as Richard Shone has described it, "rested not so much on what was found inside the town but on the view it presented from across the Loing.  Old flour and tanning mills clustered along the bridge; the river, scattered with tiny islands, seemed more like a moat protecting the houses and terraced gardens that, on either side of the sturdy Porte de Bourgogne, in turn defended the pinnacled tower of the church.  Add to this the tree-lined walks along the river, the continuous sound of water from the pier and the great wheels of the mills, the houseboats and fisherman, and there was, as every guidebook exclaimed, ‘a captivating picture’, a sight ‘worthy of the brush' " (Richard Shone, Sisley, New York, 1992, p.159).  We can see in the present picture the Provencher Watermill, the church, and the 12^th century town gateway known as the Porte de Bourgogne.

Sisley’s chief concern in this series was to capture the landscape at different times of 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" (Gustave Geffroy, “Sisley”, in Les Cahiers d’Aujourd’hui, Paris, 1923).