The Bridge at Moret

The bridge in this picture had carried the road into Moret since the Middle Ages, and in 1893 it was still a working crossing. A horse pulls a high-loaded cart over it, a man leans at the parapet, and beside it a group of mills stood in the river, driven by the Loing. Behind the roofs rises the tower of the church of Notre-Dame. The painter lived a few streets away, and he signed and dated this canvas at the lower left, Sisley 93. It came to the French state in 1972, bequeathed by Enriqueta Alsop in the name of Doctor Eduardo Mollard, who had owned it in Paris. Half a century after Sisley stood here, in August 1944, retreating German troops blew up two arches of the bridge, and the fire that followed destroyed the mill upstream.