Saint-Mammès. Soleil de juin

Sisley painted this in 1892 from the edge of Saint-Mammès, a small river town where the Loing empties into the Seine, southeast of Paris. It was a working place of boatyards and barges, and he had been drawn to this stretch of water for a decade, living just upstream at Moret. By now he was in his early fifties, the poorest and least noticed of the original Impressionists, watching Monet and Renoir find their buyers while his own work barely sold. None of that hardship shows. He gives you a bright, still June morning, the far bank and its low houses laid across calm water under a wide sky filled with light. He kept his eye level low, so that the river and its reflections take up most of the view.