Billancourt was a small village when Alfred Sisley painted there. His work is notable for an incomparable sensitivity to the subtlest nuances of weather and sunlight, a superb example of which is the present picture. He had a persistent fascination with painting barges. Some recent commentators note, perhaps with justification, that the frequent depiction of such a subject as barges indicated the wish to be contemporary, common to all the Impressionists. Yet there does remain one other important reason for an artist to return to such a theme so persistently: for Sisley, the masts of the barges served as convenient reference points in arranging the pictorial structure of the landscape.
[Oil on canvas, 46.5 x 56.3 cm]
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