The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand (1875): Artwork and History

The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand (1875) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Alfred Sisley (British, active in France, 1839–1899).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Of all the landscapes Alfred Sisley painted in and around Marly-le-Roi, where he lived from 1875 to 1878, this scene of workers dredging sand to facilitate barge traffic is perhaps the most original. Generally, the Impressionists showed the Seine River as a place of weekend leisure for Parisians, painting activities such as boating, yachting, promenading, and dining. Sisley depicted the river during the workweek, along with some of the men who depended on it for their livelihood.

Object facts

• Title: The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand
• Date: 1875
• Artist attribution: Alfred Sisley (British, active in France, 1839–1899)
• Place of origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 54.5 × 73.7 cm (21 7/16 × 29 in.); Framed: 71.5 × 90.5 × 9.6 cm (28 1/8 × 35 5/8 × 3 3/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1177

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.