L'Aqueduc de Marly

Sisley painted this in 1874, the same spring a group of his friends in Paris held the exhibition that got them mockingly called Impressionists. He was living in Louveciennes, west of the city, and this brick aqueduct stood a short walk from his door. It had been raised in the 17th century to help carry water pumped up from the Seine to the fountains of the royal gardens at Marly and Versailles, part of one of the most ambitious waterworks of its age. Sisley leaves all that grandeur unspoken. He comes in close, lets the arches march up the slope, and gives most of the canvas to the sky and the loose green bank. It is the only time he painted the aqueduct on its own, right up against it.