Cleveland Museum of Art

Saint-Mammès, Loing Canal

Alfred Sisley

Date

1885

Medium

oil on fabric

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The small town of Saint-Mammès is located about forty miles south of Paris, where the Seine and Loing rivers are joined by a canal. Alfred Sisley was fond of the area and often painted there in the 1880s, undoubtedly attracted by the low rents, since his poverty had become chronic in the wake of the bankruptcy and death of his father. Sisley rendered this view of the Saint-Mammès-Loring canal with a classic Impressionist technique, using pure color and soft, flickering brushwork that dissolves forms into a haze of optical sensations approximating the effect of brilliant, outdoor light. The son of an affluent British businessman, Alfred Sisley was born in Paris and became friendly with fellow students Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Frédéric Bazille while studying in the studio of Charles Gleyre during the early 1860s.

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