Langland Bay

In the summer of 1897 François Depeaux, a coal merchant from Rouen who had been buying Sisley's pictures for years, paid for the painter and Eugénie Lescouezec to travel to Britain. They stopped at Falmouth, then at Penarth near Cardiff, then moved west to Langland Bay on the Gower coast. The sea is rare in his work. He had spent most of his working life on the rivers west of Paris, the Seine and the Loing, painting towpaths, floods and bridges. The trip also settled something private. In August, in Cardiff, he married Eugénie after nearly 30 years together, which made their two children legitimate. The shipping out in the bay is traffic for Swansea, the industrial port around the coast. He brought back 17 oils and about eight pastels and was home at Moret-sur-Loing on 1 October.