Scène de rue à Marly

Alfred Sisley's Scène de rue à Marly, now in Japan's Ohara Museum of Art, dates from 1879, the period when Sisley was living near Marly-le-Roi west of Paris and finding his subjects among the village streets and surrounding countryside. Marly had been the site of Louis XIV's pleasure palace, long demolished by Sisley's day, leaving a quiet village haunted by royal grandeur. Sisley found in these unassuming streets precisely the kind of ordinary French landscape he excelled at painting: nothing historically important, nothing dramatically scenic, just the texture of a particular day in a particular place.

Sisley applies paint with a varied, rhythmic touch that distinguishes the different surfaces — cobblestones, plaster walls, foliage — while maintaining the atmospheric unity that was his greatest strength. The muted palette of ochres, grey-greens, and pale blues reflects the particular quality of Île-de-France light in overcast conditions.