Soleil couchant

Soleil couchant of 1875, now in the Leeds Art Gallery, is among Sisley's rarer sunset paintings — a painter who habitually preferred the grey overcast conditions and diffuse northern light that give his work its characteristic quiet luminosity. That he turned to the sunset sky in 1875 suggests either a specific occasion that demanded direct response or an experiment in expanding his customary tonal range. The warm gold and pink of the western sky at sunset required a palette and handling quite different from his usual silver and pale blue, and the result is one of the more emotionally direct of his early works. Leeds's art collection, assembled partly through civic purchase and partly through gifts reflecting Yorkshire's industrial prosperity, holds this as a significant example of mid-1870s Impressionism at a moment when the movement was still fighting for critical acceptance. The unexpected warmth of a Sisley sunset distinguishes this canvas from the familiar atmospheric restraint of his river and road paintings.

The warm oranges and pinks of the sunset sky are handled with longer, more decisive strokes than Sisley typically uses, the scale of the sky matching the breadth of the color effects he is attempting to capture. The landscape below is silhouetted against the light sky, reducing the terrain to simplified dark shapes.