Details

Object type

painting

Title

Boatyard at Saint-Mammes

Artist/Maker

Alfred Sisley artist

Culture/School

French

Place Associated

France, Saint-Mammes (place depicted)

Date

circa 1886

Materials

oil on canvas

Dimensions

framed: 590 x 770 mm; unframed: 388 mm x 560 mm x 19 mm

Description

Sisley painted more than one hundred pictures of the village of Saint-Mammès situated at the confluence of the River Loing with the Seine.

With just a few quick strokes of paint Sisley suggests a figure, wearing a blue top, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the river. Two other figures stand talking beside a shed. Another figure seems to be working – he is perched some four feet off the ground, on top of various planks of timber.

By 1880 the Impressionist painters had reached a crisis as to how their art should develop. Of them all – as this painting from around 1886 shows - it was Sisley who remained true to the Impressionist ideals of recording light, colour and atmosphere and of painting outside directly from the motif.

The French critic, Adolphe Tavernier, speaking at Sisley’s funeral, referred to him as ‘a magician of light, a poet of the heavens, of the waters, of the trees – in a word one of the most remarkable landscapists of his day.’

Credit Line/Donor

Presented by the Trustees of the Hamilton Bequest, 1944

ID Number

2464

Location

Kelvingrove French Art Gallery