Alfred SISLEY (1839-1899) - Lot 87

Alfred SISLEY (1839-1899) Rising Tide at Langland Bay, Lady's Cove, 1897 Oil on canvas, signed and dated "97" lower left 65.2 x 81.5 cm Provenance : Jeanne Dietsch-Sisley, daughter of the artist (her sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 18, 1909, n 11, repr. Nb); M.Picard, Paris (acquired at previous sale); Private collection, Paris. Exhibitions : 1898, Paris, Champ-de-Mars, Salon de la So- ciété Nationale des Beaux-Arts, no. 1135; 1907, Paris, no. 23. Bibliography : Daulte, 1959, no. 873, repr. nb (titled: Lady's Cove, marée montante); Lassaigne et Patin, 1983, p. 147, no. 209, repr. nb. Sylvie Brame and Francois Lorenceau, Alfred Sisley - Catalogue critique des peintures et des pastels, Éditions La bibliothèque des arts, 2021, reproduced in bb n°1001 p370 and n°1001 p507. Expert: Cabinet Chanoit In May 1897, Sisley returned to his homeland for the last time in the company of his friend, Rouen collector François Depeaux (who acquired the twenty Welsh canvases). Also present was the painter's companion, Eugénie Lescouezec, whom Sisley married on British soil on August 5. The stay lasted four months, mainly in Wales. Sisley settled in Penarth near Cardiff. He wrote to his friend, the critic Gustave Geoffroy: "The country is pretty, and the harbor, with the big boats coming in and out of Cardiff, is superb... the climate is very mild, too hot even these days... I hope to make the most of what I see around me...". As an Impressionist, Sisley selected a few motifs that he turned into several paintings, depending on the weather and the light. He painted Cardiff harbor with its boats, but above all fifteen pictures depicting the cliffs of the Welsh coast (these are quite similar to the Dieppe landscapes), concentrating on Langland Bay and more particularly on Lady's Cove. It lies below the Osborne Hotel, where he was staying. He painted four versions with slight variations: one at low tide on a calm day (BL. 998), one before a storm under a heavy sky (BL.1003), one at ebb tide, (BL. 1004) and ours at flood tide (BL.1001). Sisley's seascapes, Monet and Japanese prints. These seascapes are a completely new subject for Sisley, but they can be compared with similar views painted by Claude Monet at Fécamp in 1881 or Belle-Île in 1886. Their common source is to be found in the Japanese printmaking masters Hokusai and Hiroshige. While Monet is more monumental and conceptual, Sisley is incomparable in capturing reality and the atmosphere of the sea. Sisley's composition, color, material and treatment of brushstrokes are of the utmost sophistication: here, he contrasts the mineral world with the liquid element, massive rocks with an agitated sea of rollers, while a cottony sky reflects a soft morning light. The hairy grass of the cliffs also contrasts with the solidity of the rock, treated in almost expressionistic, virgulated brushstrokes. In unctuous whites, scrolling waves (in the Japanese manner) break on the luminous yellow pebbles of the shore. By the end of his life, Sisley had reduced his chromatic range (he had started in Moret-sur-Loing) to bluish tones, soft greens, lilacs and the ivory of foam. Here, Sisley offers us one of the prettiest canvases of his Welsh sojourn: at rising tide, the beach with its roll-top cabins, populated by a few silhouettes, sparkles under the summer sun. It is bathed in a gentle atmosphere, and Sisley, in his Impressionist language, offers us a snapshot of harmony and luminous serenity. General bibliography on Welsh works: - Sisley, Jacques Lassaigne ed.Nef 1983. - Sisley, Sylvie Patin and Mary Anne Stevens, Musée d'Orsay, 1992 - Sisley, poète de l'impressionnisme, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 2002/2003