Alfred Sisley: Hampton Court, England

"The Bridge at Hampton Court" by Alfred Sisley

"Alfred Sisley's first visit to England as a professional artist came in the summer of 1874. In England, Sisley stayed first in London, near the Victoria and Albert Museum, and did one painting of Charing Cross Bridge before he moved to a small village on the Thames just upriver of Hampton Court. The village was Molesey, a quiet backwater popular with oarsmen and not unlike the villages on the Seine near Paris which had so attracted Sisley and his fellow artists."

"There he painted a radiant series of seventeen images of suburban pleasures: strolling, boating, swimming and amiable sociability under the sunshine and scudding clouds along the Thames.  Sisley was particularly drawn to a 'flagrantly modern' iron-and-brick bridge recently erected across the Thames linking Hampton Court and East Molesey. Although the exact sequence of paintings  is conjectural, it seems his fascination with this structure grew as he studied it.

Among the 17 canvases Sisley completed at Molesey was "The Bridge at Hampton Court, which shows the first span of the crenellated bridge as it steps off the riverbank towards Hampton Court. Rowers in two sculls have just entered the scene and another, empty singles scull tilts towards the viewer where it has been left to rest between two piers. Here Sisley contrasts the bridge, a stolid piece of modern engineering, with quick moving rowers and dancing reflections on the water."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Work of Sisley" by Janice Anderson and "Sisley in England and Wales"  by Christopher Riopelle.)