Picturing Places and Spaces

The Loing River with its curving bank flows through the lower half of the print. Tall poplar trees on the far shore cast shadows on the surface of the water, and to the left, groves of trees and buildings are barely visible in the distance. In the foreground, people walk along the tow-paths and watch the passing barges and boats. Alfred Sisley moved to this area along the Loing in 1882 and lived there until his death. He explored the area during all seasons, weather conditions, and times of the day as documented in his sketchbooks and paintings. His preference to work directly from nature (en plein air) started in 1863 when Sisley along with Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédéric Bazille, all studying in the studio of Charles Gleyre, often traveled by train from Paris to the forest at Fontainebleau to sketch and paint. All these artists are considered Impressionists painters. Sisley participated in the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, and those in 1876, 1877, and 1882.

In 1896, Sisley selected this specific view along the river for many paintings. The light conditions and weather varied in each painting, and in one case he specifically noted he had captured the flooding waters of the Loing at sunrise. The print in the Stamelos collection is an original lithograph created for inclusion in a limited-edition book, Art et Nature: études brèves sur quelques artistes d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. Although the composition of the lithograph resembles those of his paintings, its bold, gestural strokes are closer to ones in his sketches that capture transient effects of light.