Alfred SISLEY (1839-1899) - Lot 45

Alfred SISLEY (1839-1899) Moret-sur-Loing, 1889 Oil on canvas, signed lower left. 33 x 41 cm In an antique carved and gilded wooden frame. Provenance : - Former Mme Pierrotet collection, Paris. - Jacques Fauchier-Magnan, Paris (1885 - 1964). - By descent to the present owners. Exhibitions : - February 16 - April 13, 1958, Bern, Kunstmuseum, Alfred Sisley, n°77. - February 10 - March 30, 1971, Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Sisley, n°47. Bibliography : - François Daulte, Alfred Sisley catalog raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Éditions Durand-Ruel, Lausanne, 1959, described and reproduced under no. 703. - Sylvie Brame and François Lorenceau, Alfred Sisley catalog critique des peintures et des pastels, La Bibliothèque des Arts , Lausanne, 2021, described and reproduced on page 294 as no. 785 and on page 487 as no. 785. In Moret-sur-Loing, where he settled permanently in 1882, Sisley discovered much more than a simple motif: a veritable painting laboratory. Riverbanks, slow-moving water, poplars, bridges and church silhouettes provided him with a limited but inexhaustible vocabulary, which he repeated year after year with almost serial exactitude. It was here that his art reached one of its most accomplished forms: a painting stripped of all superfluous picturesqueness, tending towards the sole truth of atmosphere. Dated 1889, Moret-sur-Loing perfectly illustrates this late mastery. Here, space is constructed with remarkable economy; the light, diffuse and vibrant, unifies the riverbank, the water and the sky; the town, barely visible in the distance, gives the painting its silent measure. Nothing is overemphasized, nothing is too much: only the sure harmony of a gaze, a place and a light. Expert : Agnès SEVESTRE-BARBE