Les bords du Loing

Les bords du Loing from 1880 at the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig shows Sisley at an early stage of his engagement with the Loing river, shortly after settling in the region. Leipzig's fine arts museum, with its significant French collection built through German collecting enthusiasm for Impressionism, holds this transitional work between Sisley's Seine period and his mature Loing landscapes. The canvas documents Sisley discovering what would become his most sustained and characteristic subject — the flat agricultural terrain, willow-lined banks, and reflective surface of the Loing.

The Loing's banks in 1880 receive a slightly firmer treatment than Sisley's fully mature work — outlines somewhat crisper, tonal contrasts more declarative. But the characteristic sensitivity to water as both physical surface and optical field is fully present, the river handled with the horizontal strokes and tonal gradations that define his mature riverine painting.