People and a horse-drawn wagon move along a street lined with buildings on the left and trees on the right in this loosely painted horizontal landscape. The wide street angles from the bottom left of the composition to the middle right. The surface of the road is painted with strokes of apricot orange, light gray, rust red, and olive green, and it leads back to a slate-blue, blurred area suggesting trees in the distance. The two, three, or four-story buildings are close together or may be joined. They are painted in muted tones of parchment white, pale peach, and blue gray. Closest to us and to the left, a long brown roof and two bare trees sit beyond an ivy-covered stone wall. The people are indistinct and small in relation to the scene and are dressed in black, brown, olive-green, and slate-blue clothing. One of two carriages is across the road from us and the second one is farther back. On our side of the road, a man wearing a long black jacket and gray pants strolls away from us past a neat row of trees lining the peach-colored sidewalk. The overcast gray and pale pink sky is above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “Sisley. 72.”
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People and a horse-drawn wagon move along a street lined with buildings on the left and trees on the right in this loosely painted horizontal landscape. The wide street angles from the bottom left of the composition to the middle right. The surface of the road is painted with strokes of apricot orange, light gray, rust red, and olive green, and it leads back to a slate-blue, blurred area suggesting trees in the distance. The two, three, or four-story buildings are close together or may be joined. They are painted in muted tones of parchment white, pale peach, and blue gray. Closest to us and to the left, a long brown roof and two bare trees sit beyond an ivy-covered stone wall. The people are indistinct and small in relation to the scene and are dressed in black, brown, olive-green, and slate-blue clothing. One of two carriages is across the road from us and the second one is farther back. On our side of the road, a man wearing a long black jacket and gray pants strolls away from us past a neat row of trees lining the peach-colored sidewalk. The overcast gray and pale pink sky is above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “Sisley. 72.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil

Alfred Sisley

Date
1872
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 39.5 x 59.6 cm (15 9/16 x 23 7/16 in.) framed: 63.2 x 85.1 x 10.8 cm (24 7/8 x 33 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1970.17.82
Credit line
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CF

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • French
  • France
  • landscape
  • Impressionist
  • French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Part II: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
  • Urban scene
  • Argenteuil
Provenance

From the artist 1890 to (Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York); sold 17 March 1892 to Adolphe A. Tavernier, Paris; (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 6 March 1900, no. 74, as _Rue à Sèvres_); purchased by Berhend, Paris.[1] (Wildenstein & Co., London, New York and Paris).[2] Capt. Edward H. Molyneux [1891-1974], Paris, by 1948;[3] sold 15 August 1955 to Ailsa Mellon Bruce [1901-1969], New York; bequest 1970 to NGA. [1] Dates of purchase and sale by Durand-Ruel, and buyer at Tavernier sale according to François Daulte, _Alfred Sisley_, Paris, 1959: no. 44. [2] According to François Daulte, _Alfred Sisley_, Paris, 1959, no. 44. According to letter dated 18 June 1999, in NGA curatorial files, Wildenstein & Co. has no record of ever having owned this painting. [3] Lent by Molyneux to the 1948 Paris exhibition, _Huite Siècles de Vie Britannique_.

Inscription

lower left: Sisley. 72.

NGA object ID 52226. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.