00:25Alfred Sisley was a key painter of the early Impressionist period.
00:31He put his own stamp on early Impressionist technique and produced a body of work that art historian Richard Sean called fundamentally representative of our notion of what constitutes pure Impressionism.
00:47He painted nearly 900 oil paintings, less than a dozen of which were still lives, and only one or two of which were genre scenes.
00:59The remainder were landscapes, spanning from the forests of Fontainebleau and Louvesiens, London to Wales and Moret-sur-Loire.
01:08The bridge at Villeneuve-la-Gareng was painted by Sisley in 1872.
01:15Recently built state-of-the-art bridges, emblematic of modernity, recur as motifs in Sisley's paintings of the 1870s and early 1880s.
01:29The cast iron and stone suspension bridge at Villeneuve-la-Gareng, constructed in 1844 to connect the village with the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, can be seen from a distance in a work of spring 1872.
01:46Shortly thereafter, Sisley executed this close-up, dramatically angled view, showing holidaymakers on the river and along the shore.
01:58Flat strokes of high-keyed colour, notably in the reflections on the water's surface, capture the fleeting effect of bright summer sunshine.
02:08Today, the bridge at Villeneuve-la-Gareng is in Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the United States.
02:19The Luang Canal was created in 1892.
02:24In 1880, there was a sudden change in Sisley's life and in his work.
02:30The painter abandoned Sene-Waz, where he had lived and worked since 1871, to move to Sene-Marne, where he was to live until his death in 1899.
02:44He settled finally in Morisou-Luan in September 1882, presumably attracted by the picturesque nature of this small town and by its excellent location on the banks of the Luang.
02:59During the last 20 years of his life, Sisley often painted along this river or on the banks of the Seine in the neighbouring town of Sene-Mame.
03:11It is here that the Luang and the Seine meet.
03:15Sisley also left numerous views of the canal, which follows the course of the Luang for about 50 km.
03:23He positioned himself at a point where the canal starts to curve round, where he could see the opposite bank through a screen of poplar trees with bare trunks.
03:36This picture is placed in Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.
03:41Small towns are one of the most frequent motifs in the works of the Impressionists.
03:49The same thing is with the Sisley's picture, Village on the Banks of the Seine, also known as Villeneuve-la-Gareng.
03:57Subtle lyricist, Sisley had a rare gift to feel and share with his brush the delight of the modest nature, her delicate beauty.
04:07The canvas dating back to the period of early Impressionism still retains a link with the traditional composition.
04:15Thus, the centre of the landscape is framed by trees creating a semblance of scenes.
04:22However, this construction does not deprive the naturalness of nature.
04:28Live sunlight, that primarily attracted the Impressionists, became the protagonist of Sisley's work.
04:35The artist is sensitive to the nature of variability.
04:40In this painting, created two years before the first Impressionist exhibition, light already reigns supreme.
04:49It floods the background in defiance of the traditions of aerial perspective,
04:56while the bank, closer to the viewer, is shrouded in shadow.
05:00Today, Village on the Banks of the Seine is in the collection of Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.
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