"a magician of light, a poet of the heavens, of the waters, of the trees — one of the most remarkable landscapists of this day."
- Adolphe Tavernier (collector, previous owner of ‘Huttes de bohémiens’ and close friend of Alfred Sisley)

Alfred Sisley was one of the core painters of the Impressionist group, alongside Monet, Degas, Renoir and Pissarro, that exhibited together for the first time in 1874. The son of two affluent British émigrés living in Paris, Sisley trained and spent much of his life in France where he painted idyllic landscapes, en plein air, recording the changing effects of nature through the seasons. In the early 1880s he settled in Moret-sur-Loing to the East of Paris and it was here that many of his later works, including the present, were created.

In ‘Huttes de bohémiens’ Sisley depicts the bank of the river Loing, a tributary to the Seine. River scenes such as this were an enduring fascination for both Sisley and his fellow Impressionists. Depicting water allowed for the artists to experiment with reflection and dappling light across the surface of the water. In ‘Huttes de bohémiens’ the focus is upon nature’s fleeting interactions as a gentle breeze dances through the trees and a soft plume of smoke drifts from the chimney, signalling human harmony with nature. Sisley created a series of works in 1896 of this stretch of river and its inhabitants, all with slightly different views.

A number of museums hold Sisley’s 1896 paintings from this group including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (‘A Bend in the River Loing’) and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (‘A Turn of the River Loing, Summer’).