Тополиная аллея близ Море-сюр-Луэн

Alfred Sisley was English by parents and passport, but he spent nearly his whole life painting the rivers and villages of France, and almost never anything else. By 1890 he had settled at Moret-sur-Loing, a small town southeast of Paris where the river Loing runs past old mills and lines of tall poplars. He painted this avenue again and again, at different hours and seasons, working outdoors before the motif rather than from memory in a studio. These were not comfortable years. Of the core Impressionists he stayed poorest and least celebrated, still selling little as his friends began to find buyers. The trees pull the eye straight down the road toward the light at its end, the kind of plain country scene he trusted more than any grand subject.