Le quai à sable, environs de Port-Marly

The year 1875 marked a significant turning point for Alfred Sisley, who left Louveciennes for Marly-le-Roi, a small town nestled in the lush Seine valley, less than twenty kilometres from Paris. Although the artist’s decision to venture further west along the river was primarily driven by financial considerations, this idyllic locale, long celebrated for its scenic vistas and bucolic charm, would become fertile ground for some of the most productive years of Sisley’s prolific career. His Marly pictures, dating between 1875 and 1877, are widely admired as some of the most striking works of the artist’s œuvre and of the Impressionist canon.

Along with the surrounding towns of Louveciennes and Bougival, the area around Marly-le-Roi had long attracted both artists and holidaymakers. By the late nineteenth century, the region had become a popular destination for those eager to escape the bustle of the modern metropolis. Boaters, swimmers, diners, and promenaders flocked to the river, enthusiastically depicted by the Impressionists who sought to portray the Seine as a place of leisure. Setting himself apart, Sisley, who painted every aspect of the town and its environs, avoided capturing a conventionally picturesque landscape. Instead, the artist preferred to focus on the commonplace, finding merit in the seemingly insignificant and quietly charming scenes of everyday life. He depicted the river during the workweek, aiming to capture the men who depended on it for their livelihood. The art historian Richard Brettel commented: ‘More than any other Impressionist, Sisley was fascinated by the complexity of river life. Less interested in pleasure craft and their passengers than his friend [Claude] Monet, Sisley preferred to render the economically important boat life of the Seine – from ferries to flat barges and motor tugs’ (R. Brettell, A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 102). Camille Pissarro similarly preferred to depict a floating wash-house when he painted the same stretch of the river in 1872.

Le quai à sable, environs de Port-Marly is a particularly refreshing composition depicting workers dredging sand from the bottom of the Seine to facilitate a clear channel for commercial barge traffic traveling from Le Havre to Paris via Rouen. Sand pulled from the riverbed in buckets is visible piled on a small craft in the foreground and heaped on the riverbank, awaiting collection by building contractors and gardeners. The poles seen jutting out from the riverbank and held by the figure in the small skiff were used to moor the boats as they arrived, and could steady them as they drifted in the middle of the river. In the year this painting was created, Sisley made at least five additional pictures from roughly the same spot on the Marly quay. The artist depicted a similar activity in several canvases from 1875, one of which is currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The present painting is notable for its bright tonality, with the vivid, warm blues of the water and sky contrasted by the yellow of the sand and the ochre of the winter foliage. Sisley expresses the immediacy of the scene through his masterful treatment of light and colour, maintaining a carefully constructed and tightly controlled composition even as he captures the sky, river, and foliage in delicate, feathered brushstrokes. The figures and their surroundings are rendered in a nuanced, inimitable pictorial language, lending the painting an elegant touch and perfectly encapsulating why Sisley was held in high esteem by his fellow Impressionists.

The provenance of Le quai à sable, environs de Port-Marly attests to its quality, having belonged to a series of distinguished private collections. The painting was first owned by Cyrus J. Lawrence, an American collector, financier and banker who acquired and commissioned works by painters such as Mary Cassatt, Eugène Boudin, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. Later, the work was briefly in the collection of Duncan Phillips, another celebrated early American collector of art who co-founded the prestigious Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., renowned for its array of celebrated nineteenth and twentieth-century American and European art. Phillips and his museum played a significant role in introducing modernism to the American public. For nearly four decades, the work was also included in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.