Saint-Cloud

Most of the Impressionists in Paris hang across the river in the Musee d'Orsay, so it is a small surprise to find this Sisley in the Louvre at all. It is here because of a private gift, the Lyon donation, which keeps a handful of 19th-century paintings in their own rooms. Sisley painted Saint-Cloud, a town on the Seine just west of Paris, in 1877, the spring the Impressionists held their third group show and were still treated as a joke by most Paris critics. He had almost no money that year and painted what was close at hand, the river and the low town strung along it. Look for the church spire on the far bank and the way the water carries the clouds straight back down. He went on painting these quiet reaches of the Seine for the rest of his life, and died in 1899 still poor, before the market ever caught up with him.