The landscape you love

Every landscape painting represents a view with which the painter has fallen in love.

Alfred Sisley

Cabins along the Loing Canal, Sunlight Effect (1896) by Alfred Sisley (French, 1839-1899)

I'm not sure whether I'd go so far as to say every landscape is one that an artist has fallen in love with.  However it's certainly very true that if you look through galleries of artist's work, again and again you come across different versions of the same view

Alfred Sisley painted this bend on the Loing Canal again and again at different times of day, in different seasons and in different weather conditions.  All are recognisably the same place and all are different.  (See the Atheneum Gallery of Sisley's work to see the differeent versions)

Sisley moved with his family to a small village near Moret-sur-Loing in 1880.  The forest of Fontainebleau where the painters of the Barbizon school had worked earlier in the century is just to the west.  Unfortunately Google Street View has not yet done the smaller roads but there are one or two possibilities for where this view is if you click the link to look at the map

Here, as art historian Anne Poulet has said, "the gentle landscapes with their constantly changing atmosphere were perfectly attuned to his talents."

Of course, one of the rather nice things about landscape painting is that you can never ever get bored once you've found a landscape which appeals to you!

Do you have a landscape you love?

See more about Places to Paint