In 1880 financial hardship forced Sisley to leave àvres, on the outskirts of Paris, and move further out to the area around Moret-sur-Loing, to the southeast of the Forest of Fontainebleau. The scene depicted here is a footpath along the left bank of the Seine, just below its confluence with the Loing, at a site known as the Little Meadows. Wooded pathways along riverbanks are subject that Sisley seems to have particularly favored in his work of the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Sisley's canvas is a completely characteristic Impressionist painting, treating the effect of weather and light in an unpretentious scene. The color and handling give the canvas a great freshness. Sisley captures the sharp light that brings out vivid greens in the grass, the range of intense blues throughout the sky and river, and the white highlights in the gusting clouds and building on the distant bank. The small, blue-clad female figure in the foreground focuses the scene but remains incidental to the larger sense of burgeoning nature on a bright, breezy day in early spring. Sisley's brisk and mobile touch defines the foreground grass with assertive, broken dabs while a longer, curving stroke is employed for the branches with their newly emerging foliage.

The painting was bought at an early, unknown date by the pioneer New York collector of Impressionist paintings Erwin Davis; in April 1899 it was acquired by Durand-Ruel's New York gallery. By 1931, the painting was in London at the Arthur Tooth and Sons gallery. Five years later, it was purchased by the National Gallery, London, with funds raised from public subscription to honor the memory of the renowned English critic Roger Fry (1866-1934), who played such an important role in fostering a taste for modern art in England in the early years of this century. The choice of a work by Sisley at first seems surprising, since Fry, a champion of Cézanne, whose works he admired for their formalist structure was a harsh critic of what he saw as the formlessness of Impressionism. The funds raised were evidently insufficient to buy Cézanne." It seems, though. that the choice of a Sisley was not so unsuitable as a tribute to Fry because, as Fry had explained: "[Sisley] surpassed the others no less in the significance of his design, in his infallible instinct for spacing and proportion. His designs have. to a high degree, that pictorial architecture which Monet's so conspicuously lack." The painting was transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1953.

Inscribed 'Sisley' b.r.

Provenance:

Presented to the National Gallery by a body of subscribers in memory of Roger Fry 1936; transferred 1953
Prov:3„4Erwin Davis, New York; with Durand-Ruel, New York and Paris, 1899; with Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, 1931; the subscribers 1936

Inventory number:

N04843