I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
The Seine at Bougival
▶ Listen · narrated
This painting makes a useful case for looking carefully at what a museum label can establish: artist, date, medium, scale, movement and present home.
At a glance
- Artist
- Alfred Sisley
- Date
- 1876
- Type
- Landscape painting
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Size
- 45 × 61 cm (2 ft)
- Number
- 1992.103.4
Look closer
A river landscape
The subject is a part of the Seine near Bougival. That simple identification matters: this is not a historical scene or a portrait, but a landscape painting centred on a particular stretch of river.
A horizontal field
The canvas measures 45 by 61 centimetres (2 ft). Its width exceeds its height, giving the work a horizontal format suited to an extended view rather than a tall, narrow composition.
Paint on canvas
Oil paint is the work’s stated medium, and canvas its support. Those bare material facts keep attention on an object made by hand: pigment applied to a woven surface, rather than an image detached from its physical form.
The story
The Seine at Bougival is a landscape painting by Alfred Sisley, made in 1876. It is painted in oil on canvas and measures 45 by 61 centimetres (2 ft). The work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is also located, under inventory number 1992.103.4.
Its subject is part of the Seine near Bougival. The title gives the place, while the work’s genre identifies the broad task: landscape painting. That combination is enough to frame a careful first encounter. A named river and a named locality anchor the image in a particular place; the landscape format asks us to attend to the view as a constructed painted field.
Sisley is listed as the creator, and the painting is classified as Impressionism. Classification can be useful, but it should not replace looking. Here it provides a context for the work’s place in a movement, not a substitute for the painting itself. The object remains a relatively small oil-on-canvas landscape, made in 1876 and now held in a museum collection.
The available facts do not describe the painting’s route before it entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nor do they record any discovery or recovery story. That absence is worth retaining rather than filling with a familiar account. What can be said is more limited: a painting of the Seine near Bougival, made by Sisley, has become an object preserved, catalogued and displayed by the museum.
Why it mattered then
In 1876, this was a new landscape painting by Alfred Sisley, made in oil on canvas and associated with Impressionism. Its subject, a section of the Seine near Bougival, joined a particular place to a recognised genre. The surviving facts do not say how the work was first received, exhibited or discussed. They also do not establish what Sisley intended a viewer to notice. It is safer to identify what is secure: the date, artist, medium, landscape genre and Impressionist classification place the painting within a specific artistic moment without claiming more than the record supports.
Why it matters now
The painting still matters as a preserved encounter between a named place, a date and an artist’s work. At 45 by 61 centimetres (2 ft), it also resists the tendency to treat museum pictures as disembodied digital images: it is a finite canvas with a recorded medium and scale. Its presence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gives present-day viewers access to an 1876 landscape by Sisley. The museum record also makes the work findable through its inventory number, 1992.103.4. Such details may seem administrative, but they connect the visible painting to the institution responsible for its care and identification.
The surprising detail
The record supplies an unusually clear outline of the object while leaving its earlier journey largely unspoken. We know its artist, date, size, medium, genre, movement, collection and inventory number. The supplied information does not explain how it was found, where it was kept before entering the museum, or what happened between 1876 and its acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.
How it got here
The reference text states that the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the painting in 1992 as a promised and partial gift of Mr and Mrs Douglas Dillon. No earlier ownership history or contested-ownership context is supplied here.
Remember this
A small 1876 oil landscape by Alfred Sisley, The Seine at Bougival fixes an Impressionist painting to a particular river, place and museum record.
Test yourself
Why is it useful to keep the painting’s medium and dimensions in mind when viewing it online?
They return the image to its status as an object. The work is oil paint on canvas, 45 by 61 centimetres (2 ft): a horizontal painting of limited physical scale. An online reproduction can show an image, but it cannot by itself convey that material support or size.
Go deeper
Image: Alfred Sisley, Public domain. Licence: Public domain. Source.