The Cote du Coeur-Volant at Marly-le-Roi, under Snow

For a long time this snowy road was catalogued as a road at Louveciennes. It is now placed on the Côte du Cœur-Volant, the slope that climbs out of Marly-le-Roi towards Louveciennes, which is how the two names came to be tangled.

Sisley lived at Marly from 1874 to 1877, in a rented house on the avenue de l'Abreuvoir, above the old watering place. Marly had been Louis XIV's retreat from Versailles. The château was pulled down in 1806, and the village went on around the park and the waterworks that were left. Sisley painted the watering place on about 20 canvases, and the roads around it in every season.

The Musée d'Orsay dates this one between 1877 and 1878. It came into the national collections in 1951, a gift from Doctor Albert Charpentier and his wife.