The Church in Moret

Sisley first painted at Moret-sur-Loing in 1881, and in a letter to Monet he summed the town up as a place with a market once a week, a very pretty church and picturesque views. He settled there for good in 1889. Across 1893 and 1894 he painted that church 14 times, from different angles, at different hours, in different weather. This is the one taken from the south-east, and the museum's own title names both the church and the old market beside it. It is also the smallest of the 14, 55 by 46 centimetres, and the 1959 catalogue of Sisley's paintings by Francois Daulte, still the standard list, left it out altogether. The canvas came to Avignon in 1947 as a gift from the collector Joseph Rignault, several hundred kilometres from the town it shows.