The Seine at Bougival

Topography: Bougival is no more than ten miles northwest of Paris. Opposite an island at a deep bend in the Seine, the town was popular with summer visitors seeking amusement. It is the site of the famous Machine de Marly, which pumped water from the river to the châteaux of Versailles and Marly; in 1876, in addition to a modern bridge, there were evidently a few larger commercial structures of a sort rarely seen in Impressionist pictures. A related scene with a very similar palette, also from 1876, is in the Cincinnati Art Museum (1922.38). The river valley is wide and open, providing beautiful natural views, and Pissarro, Monet, and Renoir also worked there.

The Painting: In the foreground, a footpath traverses a green lawn on which a dozen pollarded trees are set out: Sisley reads the trees, with their straight slender trunks and limited foliage, as forming an irregular V. The trees structure this orderly design. Beneath them, a little girl is seated on the grass next to a young woman kneeling, while an older woman who stands apart from them studies the river view. Small clouds clustered above the crowns of the trees contribute to the sense of depth. While the foreground is pastoral, the background by contrast is more chaotic. Several roads—the widest of which runs along the Seine—cut through the flat landscape below and provide access to a disorderly group of buildings, including one very large structure, a warehouse with a red roof. The very bright unmodulated sunlight affords the work gaiety. The canvas, unrecorded in the nineteenth century, was not in Daulte’s 1959 oeuvre catalogue and has been little studied. It was presented to the Museum by Douglas Dillon, a former chairman of The Met’s Board of Trustees who had been American ambassador to France in the 1950s.

Katharine Baetjer 2020

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): Sisley. 76

?[Georges Petit, Paris, 1903]; [Georges Bernheim, Paris]; Bonnemaison, Paris; [Galerie Schmit, Paris]; [Galerie Nathan, Zürich, until about 1970; sold to Polak]; Henriette Polak, Amsterdam (about 1970–d. 1974); [Arthur Tooth, London, until 1976; sale, Sotheby's, London, April 7, 1976, no. 5, to Dillon]; Douglas and Phyllis Dillon, New York (1976–her d. 1982); Douglas and Susan Dillon (1983–92; jointly with The Met, 1992–his d. 2003; her d. 2019)

Paris. Galerie Georges Petit. "Cent tableaux par Boudin, Jongkind, Lépine, Sisley," January 26–February 13, 1903 (as "Les Bords de la Seine, à Bougival").

Greenwich, Conn. Bruce Museum. "Alfred Sisley (1839-1899): Impressionist Master," January 21–May 21, 2017, unnumbered cat. (ill. p. 79).

Aix-en-Provence. Hôtel de Caumont. "Sisley, the Impressionist," June 10–October 15, 2017, unnumbered cat.

Dr. Fritz Nathan und Dr. Peter Nathan, 1922–1972. Zürich, 1972, unpaginated, no. 71, ill. (color), as "La Seine à Bougival," signed and dated 1876.

Raymond Cogniat. Sisley. New York, 1978, ill. p. 62 (color), as in a private collection.

Sylvie Gache-Patin. Sisley. Paris, 1983, p. 86, no. 125, ill. p. 88 (color), associates the season depicted with early spring.

Gary Tinterow in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1991–1992." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 50 (Fall 1992), p. 48, ill. (color), believes it was probably painted in early autumn.

Richard Shone. Sisley. Rev. and enlarged ed. London, 1994, p. 18, fig. 11.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 463, ill.

MaryAnne Stevens in Alfred Sisley: Impressionist Master. Exh. cat., Bruce Museum. Greenwich, Conn., 2017, p. 76, ill. p. 79 (color).

Sylvie Brame and François Lorenceau. Alfred Sisley: Catalogue critique des peintures et des pastels. Lausanne, 2021, pp. 109, 434, no. 212, ill. (color).

Sebastian Smee. Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism. New York, 2024, pp. 300–301, possibly regarding this painting.