Sisley's Flood at Port-Marly
When the Seine flooded Port-Marly, Sisley painted the village under water, with boats in the streets.
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About the series
Alfred Sisley lived and worked in the villages along the Seine west of Paris. In 1872, and again in the spring of 1876, the river burst its banks at Port-Marly. Sisley painted the flood in a group of canvases, most of them from 1876.
The main motif is a small building on a street corner, the wine shop À Saint-Nicolas, standing in the water with a row of bare trees beside it and small boats moored at its door. The skies are cloudy and the flood water reflects the light, painted in calm, even strokes. There is no sense of disaster: the pictures are quiet studies of light, sky and water. The Musée d'Orsay in Paris holds Flood at Port-Marly of 1876 and The Boat in the Flood of the same year.
These are wide landscapes of moderate size. A pair of flood views hangs well in a living room or above a desk.
