Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Sisley’s Rest Along the Stream

Le repos au bord du ruisseau. Lisiere de bois (Rest along the Stream. Edge of the Wood) Alfred Sisley
Le repos au bord du ruisseau. Lisière de bois (Rest along the Stream. Edge of the Wood) Alfred Sisley

Among the original core group of French Impressioinist painters, English born Alfred Sisley has long been a personal favorite of mine. There is something direct and to the point about his work that particularly appeals to me, and I think presages the work of the American, Russian and Scandinavian painters who would adopt to the influence of the Impressionists, but lean a bit more toward painterly realism.

This painting has been a source of fascination for me since I first saw it in a book years ago, and became convinced that the reproduction was incorrect. Since then, I’ve seen it reproduced in other books, also with questionable color balance, and the images currently on the internet have done little to change things.

The image I’m linking to is on the Google Art Project. It’s nicely high resolution (downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons), but I can’t help but think it’s too monochromatically green. The Musée d’Orsay has the original in it’s collection, but their website image of the painting is inexplicably terrible, though at least warmer in tone.

It’s been a long time since my single visit to the Musée d’Orsay, but based on that, and my more recent and frequent encounters with other paintings by Sisley, I’ve attempted to color correct the Google Art Project version with my “best guess”. I can make no claims of accuracy, but I might as well add my color variation to the internet image mix for this painting.