Bords de Seine, Saint-Cloud

Bords de Seine, Saint-Cloud from 1879 shows Sisley working along the western stretch of the Seine where it curves around the Saint-Cloud peninsula — a location popular with Impressionist painters for its combination of river, wooded slopes, and suburban settlements. Sisley was at this point living in the Paris region after his English family lost its fortune in the Franco-Prussian War, painting the Seine and its tributaries with extraordinary consistency despite chronic financial hardship. The 1879 date places this work between his remarkable Flood series and his later move to the Loing valley.

Sisley treats the Seine's surface with horizontal strokes of varied blues, greens, and reflected sky tones — his handling of water among the most accomplished in Impressionism. The wooded bank opposite recedes through atmospheric perspective rendered in softened greens and gray-blues, the whole composition unified by a high, luminous sky.