Autumn: Banks of the Seine near Bougival

Although he trained for a career in business in London, Alfred Sisley returned to his birthplace, Paris, to pursue painting. He was accepted into the École des Beaux-Arts and quickly made friends with a group of artists who would together form the Impressionists. The Impressionists explored the transient effects of sunlight on landscapes using short, quick brushstrokes, favouring impressions over exact copies of nature. This painting was shown at the first exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874 at the gallery of the French photographer, Nadar. Sisley was then working in Louveciennes and its environs, where he had spent more than a year producing an abundance of works of a quality not always found in his subsequent painting. His sensitive perception enabled him to note the subdued harmony of colours of this autumnal day and to capture its glowing luminosity.