Die Kirche von Moret

By the time Sisley set up at this window in 1894, Monet was across the country painting the front of Rouen cathedral over and over, chasing the light as it shifted. Sisley did much the same with the church of Notre-Dame in Moret, the small town on the Loing where he had chosen to live out his days. He painted its west front and the flank of the nave perhaps a dozen times, from one upstairs room across the square, catching it in morning sun, in rain, in the flat gold of evening. This one was done on a fine evening, the old stone worked up in short bright strokes. Sisley, English by birth, never sold well in France. He died in Moret five years later, and it was only afterwards that his prices climbed.