The forge in Marly-le-Roi

Sisley is the Impressionist who almost only painted landscapes: rivers, snow, floods, wide skies. So this dark little interior is a surprise from him. It shows the village forge at Marly-le-Roi, west of Paris, where he was living, with a group of men gathered at the anvil. He painted it in 1875, a hard stretch for the whole group after their first independent exhibition the year before had sold almost nothing, and Sisley was sliding into a poverty he never really climbed out of. Almost the only light in the room comes from the forge fire itself, catching the smith and the hot iron he is working.