.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Comité Alfred Sisley has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which will be included in the new edition of the Alfred Sisley catalogue raisonné by François Daulte, being prepared at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau.
Alfred Sisley's pastels are entirely made up of landscapes, and according to Richard Shone, 'the finest group is undoubtedly the series [of] winter and spring views from an upper window of his house at Les Sablons, overlooking the Moret railway station, with deep snow or scintillating sunshine on cold, clear days', of which the present work is one of only eight recorded (R. Shone, Sisley, London, 1992, p. 153). It is a tribute to the importance of this series that at least four of the others are in important museum collections (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Von Der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; and Cincinnati Art Museum, OH).
In 1883 Sisley had moved from Moret-sur-Loing to the nearby village of Les Sablons, where he would live for several years. The surrounding countryside allowed the artist to explore the fleeting effects of light on the fields and sky which he so cherished and which prompted the admiration of so many collectors, critics and fellow artists. It was at Les Sablons that Sisley would develop his mastery of the pastel medium, which was new to the artist's working methods and prompted by his penury: pastels were quicker and less expensive to execute than oils, and easier to sell, a clear necessity when, as the artist wrote of his financial worries, 'on the 21st I shall once more be without a sou...I must give something to my butcher and my grocer; to one I haven't paid anything at all for six months, to the other nothing for a year' (letter from Sisley to Durand-Ruel, Les Sablons, 17 November 1885, quoted in Shone p. 153).
Shone dates this series to the winter and spring of 1888, and whilst the Comité Sisley proposes a date of around 1880, considering the view from the house in which Sisley only lived from around 1883, a slightly later date may be possible.
Alfred Sisley's pastels are entirely made up of landscapes, and according to Richard Shone, 'the finest group is undoubtedly the series [of] winter and spring views from an upper window of his house at Les Sablons, overlooking the Moret railway station, with deep snow or scintillating sunshine on cold, clear days', of which the present work is one of only eight recorded (R. Shone, Sisley, London, 1992, p. 153). It is a tribute to the importance of this series that at least four of the others are in important museum collections (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Von Der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; and Cincinnati Art Museum, OH).
In 1883 Sisley had moved from Moret-sur-Loing to the nearby village of Les Sablons, where he would live for several years. The surrounding countryside allowed the artist to explore the fleeting effects of light on the fields and sky which he so cherished and which prompted the admiration of so many collectors, critics and fellow artists. It was at Les Sablons that Sisley would develop his mastery of the pastel medium, which was new to the artist's working methods and prompted by his penury: pastels were quicker and less expensive to execute than oils, and easier to sell, a clear necessity when, as the artist wrote of his financial worries, 'on the 21st I shall once more be without a sou...I must give something to my butcher and my grocer; to one I haven't paid anything at all for six months, to the other nothing for a year' (letter from Sisley to Durand-Ruel, Les Sablons, 17 November 1885, quoted in Shone p. 153).
Shone dates this series to the winter and spring of 1888, and whilst the Comité Sisley proposes a date of around 1880, considering the view from the house in which Sisley only lived from around 1883, a slightly later date may be possible.