Village de Voisins

Sisley painted this in 1874, the year a group of friends hung their work in the photographer Nadar's old studio and got themselves mocked as Impressionists. Sisley put in five canvases. He was living right here, at Voisins near Louveciennes, west of Paris, and the picture is as unassuming as the place, a village road running straight back between bare trees and low houses. He kept to the plain motifs around his door rather than chasing grand views. The banker and collector Isaac de Camondo left the painting to the French state in 1911, which is how it reached the Musée d'Orsay.