Sob a ponte de Hampton Court

1874 was a loud year for Sisley and his friends. That spring in Paris they held the first exhibition of what a hostile critic soon nicknamed Impressionism. That summer Sisley crossed to England, where he had family roots, and spent several weeks around Hampton Court on the Thames west of London, painting the river again and again. Here he did something unusual. Instead of a postcard view of the old bridge, he set himself underneath it, looking out from the shadow of its brick piers to the bright water beyond. He was fresh from arguing, back in Paris, for exactly this kind of quick open-air painting. The near arch frames the whole scene and throws the foreground into cool shade.