Riverbank at Saint-Mammès

By 1884 Alfred Sisley had done something unusual for an Impressionist. While his old friends Monet and Renoir kept drifting toward Paris salons and the bright south, he had settled for good in the quiet country around Moret-sur-Loing, southeast of the capital. Saint-Mammès, the little village here, sits where the river Loing meets the Seine, and Sisley painted it again and again, well over a hundred canvases of its quays, barges, and water. This is one of them. The working canal that joined the two rivers kept the place busy with timber and freight, though what Sisley cared about most was that low, wide sky doing most of the work overhead. He would stay in this corner of France for the rest of his life.