September Morning

By the late 1880s Alfred Sisley had settled near the little town of Moret-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris, and he painted its river and streets over and over for the rest of his life. This is a morning on the Loing, the water quiet, the pale and reddish buildings of the town catching the early light across the way, the near trees dabbed in with quick strokes of leaf. Sisley was born in France to English parents and stayed the most faithful landscape painter of the Impressionist circle, the one who almost never turned to anything else. He also stayed poor. Recognition and better prices came only after his death in 1899, when this kind of unshowy river view finally found its buyers.