Alfred Sisley: The Seine at Bougival

"The Seine at Bougival" by Alfred Sisley

 

"Autumn: Banks of the Seine at Bougival" by Alfred Sisley

"Bougival was a riverside village on the left bank of the Seine, a fifteen-minute train ride from Paris, with strong artistic associations. Berlioz, Corot and Meissonier had lived there and Maupassant had used it as the setting for some of his stories. Bougival was virtually immortalized in a string of Impressionist paintings, especially by Alfred Sisley, Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. 

Sisley wrote to his friend, the critic Adolphe Tavernier, sharing this observation about painting outdoors: 'Objects must be rendered with their own texture, especially if they are enveloped in light, as they are in nature . . . The sky cannot be only a background . . . It contributes not only by giving depth to the planes, but also by providing movement, by its form, and by its arrangement in rapport with the composition of the painting.'"

To be continued

(Excerpt from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)