Die Ufer der Oise

Sisley painted this in 1877, the year of the third Impressionist exhibition, when the group was still being mocked in the Paris press. He was the son of English parents but had grown up in France, and he stayed with pure landscape more single-mindedly than almost any of his colleagues. The Oise is a quiet river north of Paris, and what he is really after here is the sky and its light on moving water, the reflections broken by the current. In a picture like this more than half the canvas is given over to clouds. Sisley kept painting these riverbanks for the rest of his life and sold very little, staying poor to the end.