The Embankment at Billancourt - Snow
Framed: 24 1/16 x 27 11/16 inches (61.12 x 70.33 cm)
Exposition Alfred Sisley, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, February 5–28, 1897, no. 7, as La Berge, à Billancourt, neige, 1879.
Exhibition: Paintings by Sisley (1840–1899), Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, March 24–April 7, 1917, no. 1, as La berge à Billancourt.
Exhibition of Paintings by Alfred Sisley (1840–1899), Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, January 8–22, 1921, no. 12, as La berge à Billancourt.
Exhibition of Paintings by Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, February 18–March 1925, no. 19, La berge à Billancourt.
Kansas City Collects: A Selection of Works of Art Privately Owned in the Greater Kansas City Area, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 22–February 28, 1965, no. 17, as The Embankment at Billancourt, Snow.
Homage to Effie Seachrest, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 25–October 9, 1966, no. 4, as The Embankment at Brillancourt [sic]—Snow.
Gli Impressionisti e la neve: La Francia e l’Europa
, Palazzina della Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Turin, Italy, November 27, 2004–April 25, 2005, no. 125, as L’argine a Billancourt, neve.Alfred
Sisley
English,
born Paris, 1839-1899
The Embankment at Billancourt-Snow,
1879
Oil on canvas
Alfred Sisley was the sole Impressionist painter to depict only landscapes. He celebrated
familiar places by exploring the effects of changing light and weather in
different seasons. Billancourt, a village southwest of Paris on the river
Seine, was a port for barges, a few of which are seen here near the riverbank.
The Impressionists usually painted on canvases primed with a white ground to
give luminosity to their colors. Snow enabled them to explore reflections of
light against the purity of a white backdrop. Here, the snow has begun to thaw
and muted these effects.
Bequest from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Brace, 75-6
With Gaston-Alexandre Camentron, Paris, by February 23, 1892;
Purchased from Camentron by Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock no. 2021, as
La berge à Bellancourt, 1892–July 1897 [1];Transferred from Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, stock no. 1902, July 1897–March 16, 1927 [2];
Purchased from Seachrest by Mr. William James (1875–1960) and Mrs. Mildred (née White, 1882–1975) Brace, Kansas City, MO, by 1949–March 31, 1975 [4];
Their bequest to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1975.
NOTES:
[1] See email from Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris, to Nicole Myers, NAMA, January 11, 2016, NAMA curatorial files. A handwritten inscription and paper label on the stretcher corroborate the stock number.
[2] See email from Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris, to Nicole Myers, NAMA, January 11, 2016, NAMA curatorial files. A handwritten inscription and paper label on the stretcher corroborate the stock number. See also the Durand-Ruel photo stock card, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Photo Archives, no. A184.
[3] See email from Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel et Cie., Paris, to Nicole Myers, NAMA, January 11, 2016, NAMA curatorial files. Effie Seachrest (1869–1952) was a Kansas City dealer and connoisseur of modern art who went on frequent scouting trips to New York and Europe. She organized exhibitions and hosted art appreciation classes at her home on Troostwood Road, known as the Little Gallery in the Woods. Seachrest sold The Embankment at Billancourt—Snow to William James and Mildred Brace sometime prior to June 18, 1949, when the Braces had the painting cleaned by Nelson-Atkins conservator James Roth; see Nelson-Atkins deposit receipt dated June 18, 1949, NAMA curatorial files. The precise date of sale is unknown, but extant correspondence confirms that Seachrest placed the painting in the Brace collection; see letter from Ralph T. Coe, NAMA, to Mildred Brace, June 9, 1966, NAMA archives. James Reuland, grandson of William James and Mildred Brace, believes his grandparents acquired The Embankment at Billancourt—Snow "well before" Seachrest’s passing in 1952. See email from James Reuland to Brigid M. Boyle, NAMA, March 23, 2022, NAMA curatorial files.
[4] When Mildred Brace died on March 16, 1975, she bequeathed Sisley’s The Embankment at Billancourt—Snow to the Nelson-Atkins but stipulated that her daughter, Betty Jane Reuland (née Brace, 1916–2002), retain the work during her lifetime. Reuland displayed the painting at her home in Kansas City until her death on March 10, 2002, after which it was transferred to the Nelson-Atkins. See email from James Reuland, grandson of William James and Mildred Brace, to Brigid M. Boyle, NAMA, March 23, 2022.
Exposition Alfred Sisley, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1897), 26 [repr., in Theodore Reff, ed., Modern Art in Paris: Two-Hundred Catalogues of the Major Exhibitions Reproduced in Facsimile in Forty-Seven Volumes, vol. 43, Exhibitions of Impressionist Art I (New York: Garland, 1981), unpaginated], as La Berge, à Billancourt, neige, 1879.
Exhibition: Paintings by Sisley (1840–1899), exh. cat. (New York: Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1917), unpaginated, as La berge à Billancourt.
"Exhibitions Now On: Sisley at Durand-Ruel’s," American Art News 15, no. 25 (March 31, 1917): 2.
Exhibition of Paintings by Alfred Sisley (1840–1899), exh. cat. (New York: Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1921), unpaginated, as La berge à Billancourt.
"Sisley at Durand-Ruel’s," American Art News 19, no. 14 (January 15, 1921): 2, as Berge a [sic] Billancourt.
Exhibition of Paintings by Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, exh. cat. (New York: Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1925), unpaginated, as La berge à Billancourt.
Possibly M[inna] K. P[owell], "In Gallery and Studio: News and Views of the Week in Art," Kansas City Star 49, no. 131 (January 26, 1929): 6.
Possibly M[inna] K. P[owell], "In Gallery and Studio: News and Views of the Week in Art," Kansas City Star 49, no. 145 (February 9, 1929): 6.
Possibly M[inna] K. P[owell], "Art: Centuries of Paintings at the Kansas City Art Institute Draw Large Crowd," Kansas City Times 98, no. 6 (January 7, 1935): 13.
François Daulte, Alfred Sisley: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint (Lausanne: Éditions Durand-Ruel, 1959), no. 347, pp. 345, 351, 358, (repro.), as La Berge à Billancourt en 1879—neige.
Kansas City Collects: A Selection of Works of Art Privately Owned in the Greater Kansas City Area, exh. cat. (Kansas City: Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum, 1965), unpaginated, as The Embankment at Billancourt, Snow.
Ralph T. Coe, "Fine Art in Growing Private Collections Here," Kansas City Times 97, no. 135 (February 11, 1965): 12D.
Homage to Effie Seachrest, exh. cat. ([Kansas City, MO]: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1966), 7, 13, 15, (repro.), as The Embankment at Brillancourt [sic]—Snow.
"Homage to Effie Seachrest," Gallery Events (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) (July–August 1966): unpaginated.
"Recent Acquisitions," Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 5, no. 3 (February 1976): 39, (repro.), as The Embankment at Billancourt—Snow.
MaryAnne Stevens, ed., Alfred Sisley, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1992), 53n105, 178, 279.
Charles S. Moffett et al., Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Phillips Collection, 1998), 77n19.
Marco Goldin, Gli impressionisti e la neve: La Francia e l’Europa, exh. cat. (Conegliano, Italy: Linea d’ombra Libri, 2004), 295, 384, (repro.), as L’argine a Billancourt, neve.
Leìonard Gianadda and Martha Degiacomi, Treìsors impressionnistes: La Collection Ordrupgaard; Degas, Ceìzanne, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Matisse . . ., exh. cat. (Geneva: Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 2019), 62, 62n1.
Sylvie Brame and François Lorenceau, Alfred Sisley: Catalogue critique des peintures et des pastels (Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des arts, 2021), no. 376, pp. 164, 450, 516–17, 519, 522, 550, (repro.), as La berge à Billancourt, temps de neige.
Brigid M. Boyle, “Alfred Sisley, The Embankment at Billancourt—Snow, ca. 1879,” catalogue entry in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2023), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.660.
