The Versailles Road

In 1875 the road to Versailles led to more than a palace. The French parliament had been sitting there since March 1871, and that year it voted the constitutional laws that settled France as a republic. Sisley was living a few miles away, at Marly-le-Roi, and none of the politics reaches this canvas. Tall trees frame a dusty road, a pair of walkers in dark clothes stand out against it, and a white horse moves further up between the houses. He signed and dated it at the lower right, Sisley 75. The picture is small, less than half a metre high. It reached the French state in 1973 as a gift from the collectors Max and Rosy Kaganovitch, who had lent it to the Kunsthaus in Zurich for the five years before.