Le talus de chemin de fer à Sèvres
Alfred Sisley·1879
Historical Context
Le talus de chemin de fer à Sèvres, in the Botero Museum in Bogotá, shows the railway embankment at Sèvres — a characteristically Impressionist subject that combines the modern infrastructure of the rail network with the natural landscape it cut through. By 1879 the railways radiating from Paris had become a familiar part of the landscape in all directions, their cuttings and embankments reshaping the terrain as definitively as any river valley. Sisley, working west of Paris along the Seine, encountered the railway embankments regularly and incorporated them into his landscapes with matter-of-fact acceptance rather than romantic nostalgia or modernist enthusiasm.
Technical Analysis
The embankment creates a strong diagonal in the composition, its grassy slope rendered with varied greens and ochres that capture the rough, unmanicured character of railway infrastructure. The sky above occupies a significant portion of the canvas, its clouds handled with the careful attention to atmospheric conditions that characterizes Sisley's best work.
