The Lesson

In April 1874, 30 painters rented Nadar's old photographic studio on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris and put on a show of their own, outside the official Salon. Sisley sent five canvases, all landscapes: a road at Saint-Germain, an island in the Seine, an orchard, two views at Port-Marly. This picture is from the same year, and it is an interior. The two children at the table are his, Pierre, born in 1867, and Jeanne, born in 1869, at their lessons. Rooms are rare in Sisley. His catalogue runs to roughly 900 paintings and almost all of them are landscapes. The daughter sits with her back turned, so very little of her is visible. Jeanne became a painter and engraver herself, trained by her father, and after his death in 1899 she looked after what he left behind.