Winter and its climate often inspired the Impressionist generation. The season offers countless visual variations that would become, as is the case here, the very subject of the painters. In the foreground of this canvas, the snow has delicately settled on the surface of the ground. It hasn’t been trodden by human footsteps. The water of the Seine is frozen into a large mirror that reflects the sky’s pastel glow. The hill in the background seems to disappear into a purplish mass behind the bulwark of orange trees that lines the waterway. The atmosphere is peaceful, quilted even.
A big fan of the banks of the Seine, the most French of English painters explored Argenteuil, Bougival, and here, Port-Marly to create their pictorial geography. What interests Sisley is less to paint reality with precision than to reflect a sensation he felt. Faithful to the founding principle of Impressionism, which dictates that artists paint "on the motif", that is, in the open air and not in the studio, Sisley here is interested in climatic variations and the effects of light and colour this produces on the landscape he’s looking at.
That year, 1872, the famous art dealer Durand-Ruel purchased Sisley's first paintings. The first Impressionist exhibition took place two years later in 1874. Sisley exhibited six landscapes at the event.
Detail : Blue shadows, pinkish-orange glows, the palette used to paint this delicate winter landscape recalls Monet's famous painting "Impression of Sunrise" (Marmottan Museum, Paris), painted the same year.
Inv. P 1736
Winter and its climate often inspired the Impressionist generation. The season offers countless visual variations that would become, as is the case here, the very subject of the painters. In the foreground of this canvas, the snow has delicately settled on the surface of the ground. It hasn’t been trodden by human footsteps. The water of the Seine is frozen into a large mirror that reflects the sky’s pastel glow. The hill in the background seems to disappear into a purplish mass behind the bulwark of orange trees that lines the waterway. The atmosphere is peaceful, quilted even.
A big fan of the banks of the Seine, the most French of English painters explored Argenteuil, Bougival, and here, Port-Marly to create their pictorial geography. What interests Sisley is less to paint reality with precision than to reflect a sensation he felt. Faithful to the founding principle of Impressionism, which dictates that artists paint "on the motif", that is, in the open air and not in the studio, Sisley here is interested in climatic variations and the effects of light and colour this produces on the landscape he’s looking at.
That year, 1872, the famous art dealer Durand-Ruel purchased Sisley's first paintings. The first Impressionist exhibition took place two years later in 1874. Sisley exhibited six landscapes at the event.
Detail : Blue shadows, pinkish-orange glows, the palette used to paint this delicate winter landscape recalls Monet's famous painting "Impression of Sunrise" (Marmottan Museum, Paris), painted the same year.
Inv. P 1736
