View of the Thames: Charing Cross Bridge

In the summer of 1874 Sisley spent about four months in England, and nearly everything he painted there was upriver, around Hampton Court. This small canvas is the exception, his only view of central London. He set up on the south bank of the Thames and looked across towards the dome of St Paul's, pale in the haze. In front of it run the piers of the Charing Cross railway bridge, opened just ten years earlier to carry trains into the new station on the Strand, and the white clouds of smoke along it suggest trains crossing. The river is busy with steamers and sailing boats, and among them sits a little rowing boat with three people in it. The Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought the picture in 1876. It hangs at the National Gallery on loan from the Andrew Brownsword Arts Foundation.