Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by the Comité Sisley. This work will be included in the forthcoming Alfred Sisley catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation.

Provenance
Marguerite Schloss Collection, Paris.
Stoppenbach & Delestre Ltd, London.
Eric R. Veigel Collection, Texas.
Private collection, Texas.
Edward Tyler Naham Fine Arts, New York.
Private collection, New York.
Anon. sale, Millon & Associés, Paris, 27 June 2007, lot 42.
Private collection, Portugal (acquired at the above sale).
Thence by descent to the present owners.

Exhibited
London, Stoppenbach & Delestre, French 19th and 20th Century Paintings, 3 December 1987 - 16 January 1988, no. 15.

The Impressionist landscape painter Alfred Sisley, born to English parents in France, had moved to Veneux-Nadon near Moret-sur-Loing, just south of Saint-Mammès with his family in 1880. He and his wife Eugénie Lesouezec and his children Pierre and Jeanne continued to live in that area for the rest of their lives, moving several times between the two villages. The local scenery offered a constant source of inspiration to the artist, who tried to capture the relationship between land, water, and sky as well as the changing effects of light on his surroundings. In 1880 and 1881 the bridge, riverbank and quayside of Saint-Mammès were often the subject of his paintings. In the following years Sisley focused his attention on the Loing and its canal, which joined the Seine at Saint-Mammès and executed an entire series of these views. '[...] the gentle landscapes with their constantly changing atmospheres were perfectly attuned to his talents' (A.L. Poulet, Corot to Braque. French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston 1979, p. 77).

The fascination with the beauty of the Seine valley goes back to the year 1874 when Sisley had moved to Louveciennes with his family. This fascination lasted a lifetime and let him produce canvases quintessentially Impressionist in their composition, style and subject matter. It was during this time that landscape became his favourite subject. Indeed, unlike some of his Impressionists counterparts, who painted social crowds and celebrations of modernity, Sisley painted the rural life: 'The subject matter on which Sisley resolutely turned his back – scenes of everyday urban life, interiors with figures, bustling Paris streets, the whole panoply of la vie modern – was just what attracted attention in the works of his fellow exhibitors. Sisley was a landscape painter tout court and almost absurdly modest in the selection of his motifs' (R. Shone, Sisley, London, 1992, p. 62).

A key influence in Sisley's work was Camille Corot. Both artists favoured rural scenery as their chosen subject, but Sisley most particularly drew inspiration from his fellow painter in the careful positioning and structuring of his compositions. As Richard Shone notes, 'the influence of Corot ... runs throughout Sisley's work. Both pitch their easels at the edge of the wood or by the side of a road entering a village; both place country figures in an intimate but undramatic relation to their surroundings ... seen against massed foliage below skies that fill nearly half the canvas' (Ibid., p. 35).

For the present composition, Le chantier de Matrat à Moret sur Loing, Sisley set his easel at a spot along the Matrat boatyard on the route to Moret. Describing an idyllic winter's day, the present work depicts the quiet riverbank in a moment of unbroken peace. The characteristic elements of a study en plein air with its flurry of short and broken brushstrokes in pastel colours are all present. The work is carefully arranged in an orderly and balanced manner with a small boat in the foreground, and with the wintery trees in their pink hazy hues framing the composition. The outline of the boatman's hut accentuates the scene and contrasts with the blue sky as well as the water of the river. The bright, luminous sky occupies almost two thirds of the composition and the crisp wintery sunshine is reflected in the dappled water.

Le chantier de Matrat à Moret sur Loing is an outstanding example of Sisley's mastery in handling the subtlety of colour. From the saturated blue, pink and yellow which form the sky and water, to the nuances of green, violet, and beige which make up the land, Sisley layers these colours in rapid and delicate brush strokes creating a rich surface texture and capturing a scene imbued with a dramatic winter glow. Describing Sisley's incredible talent, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, an admirer of the artist said 'Sisley seizes the passing of the moments of the day; watches a fugitive cloud and seems to paint it in its flight; on his canvass [sic] the live air moves and the leaves yet thrill and tremble. He loves best to paint them in spring, when the Yonge leves on the lute wode, waxen al [sic] with will, or when red and gold and russet-green the last few fall in autumn; for then space and light are one, and the breeze stirring the foliage prevents it from becoming an opaque mass, too heavy for such an impression of mobility and life' (quoted in Ibid., pp. 118-122).


Le chantier de Matrat à Moret sur Loing is a typical example of one of Sisley's most treasured subjects, the riverbanks. The village of Moret was ideally situated on the confluence of the two rivers, seventy kilometres upstream from Paris. As the meeting point of all the waterways crossing central France, from its earliest days, the town's fortunes were inextricably linked to the river. Thanks to its strategic location, it became one of the foremost centres of barge activity in the region, and for a long time played a significant role in the history of the inland waterways. As the critic Gustave Geffroy wrote in 1923: 'He sought to express the harmonies that prevail, in and at every time of the day, between foliage, water and sky, and he succeeded... He loved riverbanks; the fringes of woodland; towns and villages glimpsed through the old trees; old buildings swamped in greenery; winter morning sunlight, summer afternoons' (G. Geffroy, 'Sisley', in Les Cahiers d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1923, n.p.). For Sisley, every nuance in the change of the weather or time of day could be reflected in the surface of the water and this offered a new way to explore the landscape and its atmospheric effects. Consequently, time and again, Sisley revisited riverside paysages from the same viewpoint to depict nature in all seasons. The predominance of the sky also resounds with Sisley's interest in capturing the spontaneity of change in the weather. Indeed, the artist painted this particular boatyard near Moret on many occasions and during all seasons of the year.

Since his death, Sisley has been established as a major landscape painter of the Impressionist group and is recognised as a truly authentic Impressionist who went on to produce over 900 canvases, a large part of which are landscapes of river scenes and are now some of the most admired works in leading museum collections. Fellow artist Camille Pissarro described him as such: 'a great and beautiful artist, in my opinion he is a master equal to the greatest' (C. Pissarro quoted in C. Lloyd, Camille Pissarro, London, 1981, p. 8).