Summer Landscape

Alfred Sisley was the most consistently Impressionist of the core group — never seriously departing from landscape painting executed in the open air. This 1887 summer landscape belongs to a period when Sisley worked primarily along the Loing and Seine rivers near Moret-sur-Loing, where he had settled after years of financial difficulty. Though Monet and Renoir were achieving recognition by the late 1880s, Sisley remained largely overlooked until after his death. His summer scenes from this period capture the luminous ease of long northern afternoons — hay meadows, waterways, and poplar-lined horizons rendered with a lyrical sensitivity to seasonal light that would later earn him rehabilitation as one of the movement's finest practitioners.

Sisley works with a feathery, varied brushstroke that distinguishes sky from foliage and water from earth through texture as much as color. His palette in summer landscapes is high-keyed, with greens, blues, and creamy whites dominating. Spatial recession is handled with atmospheric softening rather than strict perspective.