Barges on the Canal Saint-Martin

The Salon of 1870 opened in Paris on 1 May with two of Sisley's canal views hanging in it, this one among them. Neither drew a word from the critics. He had picked a working stretch of the Canal Saint-Martin, barges and freight inside the city rather than the river villages west of Paris he usually painted. In July, France declared war on Prussia. His father's silk export business went down in the collapse that followed and the allowance Sisley had lived on ended with it, and at Bougival, where he was living, soldiers went through the house and took what was in it. After that he lived on what he could sell. The canal had been open about 45 years, cut through the north-east of the city to bring water and goods in from the Ourcq.