Der Weg der Machine, Louveciennes

The road in the title is named after a machine, the great waterworks at Marly, a bank of huge pumps built on the Seine in the 1680s to push water uphill to the fountains of Versailles. It was still running in Sisley's day, and this straight tree-lined road ran out toward it from the village of Louveciennes, west of Paris, where he was living. He painted it in 1873, a few years after Prussian troops had occupied and looted these same villages in the war of 1870. None of that shows. What Sisley wanted was the road itself driving straight into the distance between two rows of trees, the shadows crossing it, a few figures walking, an ordinary bright day on the edge of the city.