Street Scene in Marly 1876

Curator: Here we have Alfred Sisley’s "Street Scene in Marly," painted in 1876. What’s your immediate take on it? Editor: Gray, mostly. The light is diffuse, almost nonexistent, making the stone street and stucco buildings look cold. There’s something melancholic about the ordinary scene. Curator: The gray certainly dominates. Yet look closer at the application of oil paint. It’s pure Impressionism: loose brushstrokes capturing fleeting moments, emphasizing the atmosphere. The scene almost dissolves into the light. The cobblestones shimmer due to their coarse facture and small touches of yellow and white pigment. Editor: True. I hadn’t noticed the touches of brighter colors embedded there, so they’re barely apparent. Makes you think about Sisley working outdoors, *en plein air*, trying to capture the precise mood of the day, with those bundled-up pedestrians simply making their way through town, buying supplies and taking the coach. Laboring to make something in order to sell or transport, perhaps to live another day in the neighborhood, a very normal image rendered in a way that feels like loss, almost ghostly. Curator: Loss perhaps of a traditional way of life—but not completely gone. Sisley seems interested in capturing these everyday moments and imbuing them with an aura, a touch of romance through the fog and the subtle sky, using a symbolic language, almost mythic in quality. Observe the gestures and silhouettes. Do these figures look hurried or aimless? Do the buildings represent any personal aspiration? Editor: The repetitive architectural features – the closed windows, the severe roof lines – those tell another story, about the limited means of construction that were affordable to inhabitants there at the time. And so those windows shut out opportunity and natural light! I agree the human element in it feels more spontaneous somehow – their postures feel candid compared to the rest of the image, almost as if he inserted them spontaneously on the canvas, like adding ready-made symbols, in response to painting a city under pressure from overdevelopment, so to speak. Curator: An insightful interpretation of its pictorial reality! So many readings contained in this single scene... Editor: Indeed – thank you for bringing to my attention! A little melancholy, labor, social tension and Sisley’s creative spark...a lovely painting for a drizzly day.