A la lisière du bois / Paysage. Printemps

Alfred Sisley's A la lisière du bois / Paysage. Printemps, painted in 1885 and now at the Fin-de-Siècle Museum in Schaerbeek, Belgium, shows the English-born Impressionist at work in the Île-de-France countryside that he had inhabited for most of his adult life. Sisley settled near Moret-sur-Loing in 1880, and the surrounding woodland edges, village lanes, and river scenes provided virtually all the subjects of his mature career. The spring forest edge was a characteristic Sisley subject — the light moment when bare branches begin to be filled in by new foliage, the palette shifting from winter greys to the first greens and yellows of the growing season.

Oil on canvas. Sisley's 1885 woodland edge paintings use a broken, vertical brushstroke to render spring foliage's emergence — short dashes of green, yellow-green, and pale ochre built up to suggest the flickering quality of light through new leaves. The forest edge's recession into depth is handled through colour temperature rather than linear perspective.