Le Loing, gelée blanche

Le Loing, gelée blanche from 1889 at the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery shows Sisley engaging with one of winter's most fleeting atmospheric effects — hoarfrost on the river vegetation, the landscape whitened without snow, the air still and cold. Sisley painted winter and its marginal conditions — frost, ice, flooded fields — with particular intensity throughout his career, finding in the stripped landscape a clarity of form unavailable in the foliated summer. Leicester's collection holds this work as part of its French painting holdings.

Hoarfrost whitens the foreground vegetation with pale strokes of blue-white and cream, the individual plants outlined by frost crystal deposits. The Loing's surface reflects a winter sky of cool gray and pale blue, the combination of frosted banks and silver water creating a monochromatic palette of exceptional subtlety.