«©MuséeMarmottan Monet,

Académie des beaux-arts, Paris »

Serious financial difficulties meant that Sisley was constantly looking to get away from Paris, where the cost of living was too high for him. In 1880 he discovered Moret-sur-Loing, a small town near Fontainebleau. According to his friend and biographer, Gustave Geffroy, he had at last “found his region.” Charmed by its elegant medieval architecture and surrounding forest, he moved there in 1889. The locality offered him a new repertoire of themes, which he painted in their diurnal and seasonal variations. One of his favourite subjects was the banks of the Loing, a tributary of the Seine, which was fringed with poplars between Moret and Saint-Mammès. On Saint Martin’s day, celebrated in November, nature was bedecked with the warm colours of autumn, also recalling the charms of the already distant summer. Here, Sisley displays all the intensity of his palette through the pink-orange foliage of the trees and the shades of the sky reflected in the smooth waters of the Loing, as observed by the figures walking along the riverside path.