This picture presents the Seine at the port of Marly near Louvecienne, not far from Paris. Sisley lived there in 1873 and 1874 and painted this stretch of the river very often. The work is composed in the tradition of landscape painting: the river lead the eye into depth, forming a diagonal that is counterbalanced by a lone pole in the water, to which a boat is secured. The pole serves as a repoussoir, and, at the same time, dramatizes the otherwise serene, even sleepy scene. There seems to be no human presence, except for a dissolved figure on the pier. A number of details contribute to the impression of a melancholic, transient beauty of nature: altering light, constantly changing clouds, rippled water, and fragile and feathery trees. The dominant color scheme in the painting of the sky and the water is tonal; that is, resolved in dark-and-light relationships. The stones and sand near the water, however, are painted in complementary colors of lilac and yellow and therefore are resolved in cold-and-warm color relationships. The grass on the left, well lit and brightly colored, presages Sisley's rich, multi-colored vegetation paintings of the late 1880s. The brushwork is supple and delicate. Sisley's touch varies with every nuance of light, the paint applied with flat, rather square brushstrokes, which become tighter with the rippled water and broader with the treatment of the boat and the pole.
At the time, Sisley was much influenced by Claude Monet's experiment with the ever-changing light of the seasons and its reflection in the colors of nature. To Monet, this phenomenon was purely optical and aesthetic. Sisley's response, however, tended to be rather emotional.
Critics always considered Sisley's pictures of Marly and Louvecienne to be among his best. Roger Fry wrote that "…of all the painters, Sisley alone could render the tender atmospheric harmony that exists in nature."1
Note:
1. Mary Anne Sterens, ed., Alfred Sisley, New Haven and London, 1992, p. 238.