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Lot Essay
The Comité Sisley has confirmed the authenticity of this work. This work will be included in the new edition of the Catalogue raisonné of Alfred Sisley by François Daulte, being prepared at the Galerie Brame & Lorenceau by the Comité Sisley.
Paysage au tas de bois is a radiant example of the landscape of the Seine valley, which Sisley discovered in the 1870s around Louveciennes before making his home in Marly-le-Roi. Sisley had moved to Louveciennes, having abandoned the Batignolles area of Paris; there he was in close proximity to Renoir in particular, and also to Pissarro and Monet. He had chosen the area in part because of its proximity to Paris, in part because the cost of living there was so much less than in the capital, and in part because he now had a young family to support. However, the clear impetus was the landscape itself: even in Paris, he had favoured scenes involving greenery where possible, and so his move to the less industrialised areas surrounding Paris made perfect sense. In Paysage au tas de bois, his enjoyment of the scenery is palpable. The feathered brushstrokes with which he has captured the clouds and the foliage lend the picture a lightness of touch that perfectly demonstrates the reason for which his fellow Impressionists held him in such high regard. Pissarro himself was moved to refer to Sisley as, 'a great and beautiful artist, in my opinion he is a master equal to the greatest' (Pissarro, quoted in C. Lloyd, 'Alfred Sisley and the Purity of Vision', pp. 5-33, M Stevens (ed.), Alfred Sisley, exh. cat., New Haven and London, 1992, p. 8).
In these years of close communion with nature he has developed a liberated, daring technique indicative of the sheer enjoyment in the spaces and seasons. In Paysage au tas de bois, Sisley examines the interplay of sky, horizon and earth using the revolutionary colours and techniques key to the Impressionist painter. The changing light, illuminating the silvery-greys, greens and blue tones of the grass and surrounding fauna, is masterfully elevated with lively impasto that is truly Sisley. Yet it shows the aesthetic unity of the Impressionists, the same play of light and freshness seen in Monet and Renoir’s paintings at Argenteuil.
The wood-pile, a predecessor to the soon-to-be ubiquitous haystack, itself is a deep purple hue, silhouetted by the light and vital to the composition to give weight to the exhilarating airiness of the landscape. Interwoven with luminous blues, purples and pinks, the sky stretches over the composition creating a sense of space and with it depth. Sisley attached great importance to the role of the sky within landscape painting and wrote to his friend, the art critic Adolphe Tavernier: 'The sky is not simply a background; its planes give depth (for the sky has planes, as well as solid ground), and the shapes of clouds give movement to a picture. What is more beautiful indeed than the summer sky, with its wispy clouds idly floating across the blue? What movement and grace! Don't you agree? They are like waves on the sea; one is uplifted and carried away' (quoted in Vivienne Couldrey, Alfred Sisley The English Impressionist, Exeter, 1992, p. 71).
Sisley went on to paint wood-piles and haystacks periodically throughout his career. But, unlike his compatriot Monet, who exhibited fifteen Meules in 1891, Sisley did not paint them in a series. A wood-pile is central to a landscape of Les Sablons of 1884 (fig. 1). In 1891 he painted two pictures of haystacks, both now in museums including the National Gallery of Australia (fig. 2).
The provenance of Paysage au tas de bois attests to its high quality: the picture was initially in the collection of Ödön Faragó (1869-1935), a Hungarian furniture designer who worked on the Hungarian pavilion of World Expo in 1900 which exhibited furniture designed for the Royal palace in Buda. The work was bought in Faragó's estate sale in 1935 by Ferenc Chorin Jr., an Industrialist and member of the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament.
Paysage au tas de bois is a radiant example of the landscape of the Seine valley, which Sisley discovered in the 1870s around Louveciennes before making his home in Marly-le-Roi. Sisley had moved to Louveciennes, having abandoned the Batignolles area of Paris; there he was in close proximity to Renoir in particular, and also to Pissarro and Monet. He had chosen the area in part because of its proximity to Paris, in part because the cost of living there was so much less than in the capital, and in part because he now had a young family to support. However, the clear impetus was the landscape itself: even in Paris, he had favoured scenes involving greenery where possible, and so his move to the less industrialised areas surrounding Paris made perfect sense. In Paysage au tas de bois, his enjoyment of the scenery is palpable. The feathered brushstrokes with which he has captured the clouds and the foliage lend the picture a lightness of touch that perfectly demonstrates the reason for which his fellow Impressionists held him in such high regard. Pissarro himself was moved to refer to Sisley as, 'a great and beautiful artist, in my opinion he is a master equal to the greatest' (Pissarro, quoted in C. Lloyd, 'Alfred Sisley and the Purity of Vision', pp. 5-33, M Stevens (ed.), Alfred Sisley, exh. cat., New Haven and London, 1992, p. 8).
In these years of close communion with nature he has developed a liberated, daring technique indicative of the sheer enjoyment in the spaces and seasons. In Paysage au tas de bois, Sisley examines the interplay of sky, horizon and earth using the revolutionary colours and techniques key to the Impressionist painter. The changing light, illuminating the silvery-greys, greens and blue tones of the grass and surrounding fauna, is masterfully elevated with lively impasto that is truly Sisley. Yet it shows the aesthetic unity of the Impressionists, the same play of light and freshness seen in Monet and Renoir’s paintings at Argenteuil.
The wood-pile, a predecessor to the soon-to-be ubiquitous haystack, itself is a deep purple hue, silhouetted by the light and vital to the composition to give weight to the exhilarating airiness of the landscape. Interwoven with luminous blues, purples and pinks, the sky stretches over the composition creating a sense of space and with it depth. Sisley attached great importance to the role of the sky within landscape painting and wrote to his friend, the art critic Adolphe Tavernier: 'The sky is not simply a background; its planes give depth (for the sky has planes, as well as solid ground), and the shapes of clouds give movement to a picture. What is more beautiful indeed than the summer sky, with its wispy clouds idly floating across the blue? What movement and grace! Don't you agree? They are like waves on the sea; one is uplifted and carried away' (quoted in Vivienne Couldrey, Alfred Sisley The English Impressionist, Exeter, 1992, p. 71).
Sisley went on to paint wood-piles and haystacks periodically throughout his career. But, unlike his compatriot Monet, who exhibited fifteen Meules in 1891, Sisley did not paint them in a series. A wood-pile is central to a landscape of Les Sablons of 1884 (fig. 1). In 1891 he painted two pictures of haystacks, both now in museums including the National Gallery of Australia (fig. 2).
The provenance of Paysage au tas de bois attests to its high quality: the picture was initially in the collection of Ödön Faragó (1869-1935), a Hungarian furniture designer who worked on the Hungarian pavilion of World Expo in 1900 which exhibited furniture designed for the Royal palace in Buda. The work was bought in Faragó's estate sale in 1935 by Ferenc Chorin Jr., an Industrialist and member of the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament.