Having shared with Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet the enjoyment of painting in the forest of Fontainebleau, Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) went to join his friends beside the Seine at Bougival in about 1870.

It was here that his talent as a landscape painter asserted itself, by choosing to depict the peaceful nature of the countryside with its water, trees and sky as in The Seine at Bougival.

The pastoral, intimate portrayal of countryside painted in different seasons, autumn, winter and spring, produces a poetic feeling of nature. He is without doubt the “most harmonious” of the Impressionists.

However, his taste for architecture led him to paint other subjects, such as The Marly Machine and its surroundings, the lock and the nearby houses. Here, although the painter makes the colours shimmer on his palette, the shapes are precise.

 

Discover its paintings along “the path of the impressionists”