The Watering Place at Marly-le-Roi

Early in 1875 Alfred Sisley moved his family to Marly-le-Roi, a village just west of Paris, and this frozen pool was one of the first things he painted there. It was a watering place for horses, one of the last pieces left of the water gardens Louis XIV had laid out around his château at Marly in the late 17th century. The château itself had long since been pulled down. Sisley seems to have painted the scene outdoors in a single session, in thin, quick strokes: ice and snow on the pool, the park's buttressed wall beside it, and an unmade road climbing away between bare trees. Small pin marks in the canvas show that it was carried home while the paint was still wet, and a few last touches of colour were added once he was indoors.