Le déchargement des péniches à Billancourt

Painted in 1877, this canvas shows barges being unloaded at Billancourt, an industrial suburb on the Seine just downstream from Paris. Sisley was less interested in industrial subjects than Pissarro, but this working river scene documents the commercial life of the Seine that coexisted with the more scenically attractive stretches he typically painted. Billancourt in the late nineteenth century was an industrial town with metalworking, chemical, and manufacturing plants — and the barges unloading on the quay record the material economy that sustained Paris. This work connects Sisley's Impressionism to the documentary tradition of his contemporaries.

The composition centres on the large barge hulls and quayside activity in the foreground and middle ground. Industrial buildings and chimneys form the background. Sisley uses a cooler, greyer palette appropriate to the industrial setting, contrasting with the warmer tones of his typical landscape work. The river surface is rendered in the cool reflective manner of his best water paintings.