Paintings I love
Alfred Sisley (France, 1839 – 1893)
Bords de rivière (River banks)
Oil on canvas, 66.4 x 91.8 cm.
National museum of fine arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Unlike the other Impressionist painters, such as Monet and Pissarro, who had taken refuge in London during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871, and who had painted numerous views of the city, Sisley spent only a short time on Brompton Crescent in the South Kensington neighborhood. He preferred to move to Hampton Court, a fashionable place at the time, perhaps because the royal castle park that stood there had only recently been opened to the public, or because the town was well connected to the capital by a railway line.
In addition, like Monet in some of his works, Sisley used the thick pattern of the trees in the background of the composition to encourage the eye of the viewer to move from one part of the canvas to another and pick up all the details scattered through. The work thus allows us not only to understand the dense dialogue that took place between various representatives of the Impressionist circle in those years, but also to verify how a style more in line with his previous production was still extremely important for him in this circumstance.
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