Le verger à Moret-sur-Loing, printemps

Alfred Sisley moved from the Paris suburbs to the more remote and affordable region of Moret—about seventy-five miles southeast of the capital, near the confluence of the Seine and the Loing—in January 1880, a time of dire financial straits for many of the Impressionists. The artist described enthusiastically in a letter to Monet, then house-hunting as well: "Moret is just two hours journey from Paris, and has plenty of places to let at six hundred to a thousand francs. There is a market once a week, a pretty church, and beautiful scenery round about. If you were thinking of moving, why not come and see?” (quoted in Alfred Sisley, exh. cat., The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1992, p. 184).
Sisley stayed at Moret for only a year on this occasion, before returning to Veneux-Nadon and the neighboring hamlet of Les Sablons. In 1889, however, he re-located once again to Moret, which would remain his home—and almost the exclusive subject of his art—until his death a decade later. "Sisley had found his country," the critic Gustave Geffroy later declared (ibid., p. 183).
Painted approximately two years after his return to the medieval town, Le verger à Moret-sur-Loing, printemps depicts a blossoming orchard at the start of spring, the ground green with new grass, the trees white with fresh burgeoning flowers. In the background, the stately church of Moret appears behind the wooden fence, indicating that Sisley painted the present work on the side of the town opposite the Loing river. Exhibited only once in 1977, the present painting has been in the same private collection since 1985, when it was acquired by Marion and the late Alan Oliner.