The Loire

Sisley painted this three years before his death — he died of throat cancer in January 1899, in poverty, having never achieved commercial success during his lifetime. Born in Paris to English parents, he spent most of his adult life in the villages of the Loing valley southeast of Paris, settling permanently in Moret-sur-Loing in 1889. The Loire, France's longest river, flows through the same region, and this work belongs to Sisley's sustained late exploration of the waterways and landscapes around his adopted home. The painting passed through the Thannhauser Gallery — the prominent German art dealership that was forced to flee Nazi Germany — before entering American private hands in the 1940s. It was given to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988 by Lucille E. and Joseph L. Block as part of a major bequest of Impressionist works.