Boulevard Héloïse, Argenteuil

Alfred Sisley

National Gallery of Art

People and a horse-drawn wagon move along a street lined with buildings on the left and trees on the right in this loosely painted horizontal landscape. The wide street angles from the bottom left of the composition to the middle right. The surface of the road is painted with strokes of apricot orange, light gray, rust red, and olive green, and it leads back to a slate-blue, blurred area suggesting trees in the distance. The two, three, or four-story buildings are close together or may be joined. They are painted in muted tones of parchment white, pale peach, and blue gray. Closest to us and to the left, a long brown roof and two bare trees sit beyond an ivy-covered stone wall. The people are indistinct and small in relation to the scene and are dressed in black, brown, olive-green, and slate-blue clothing. One of two carriages is across the road from us and the second one is farther back. On our side of the road, a man wearing a long black jacket and gray pants strolls away from us past a neat row of trees lining the peach-colored sidewalk. The overcast gray and pale pink sky is above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “Sisley. 72.”