MURA · THE COLLECTION · ALFRED SISLEY

The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand

The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand is an oil painting by Alfred Sisley from 1875, showing workers dredging sand from the river near Marly-le-Roi, west of Paris. It measures 54.5 by 73.7 cm and hangs in Gallery 201 of the Art Institute of Chicago, which received it in 1933 from Martin A. Ryerson.

Alfred Sisley · 1875 · Oil on canvas · Impressionism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum describes workers dredging sand to ease barge traffic on the Seine. The Impressionists generally showed the river as a place of weekend leisure for Parisians, with boating, promenading and dining; here Sisley painted it during the working week, with some of the men who depended on it for their living. The museum calls it perhaps the most original of all the landscapes he painted around Marly-le-Roi. The catalogue entry notes blue water, small working boats and pale heaps of sand.

How it was painted

Sisley was born in Paris in 1839 to British parents and remained a British citizen all his life; two applications for French nationality in 1898 came to nothing. With Monet, Renoir and Bazille he painted landscapes outdoors to catch the passing effects of sunlight, and of all the Impressionists he was the most consistent in that dedication. His work is almost entirely landscape, much of it riverside scenes on the Seine in the suburbs west of Paris. He lived at Marly-le-Roi from 1875 to 1878, and his series of the floods there in 1875 is among his most important work. Sisley died in January 1899, and his friend Monet organised a benefit sale for his children.

Where it went

The painting was shown at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1897, in the artist's lifetime, and at the Exposition Centennale de l'Art Français in 1900, when it belonged to Georges Viau. At Viau's sale at Durand-Ruel in March 1907 it was bought in. Georges Bernheim of Paris had it in April 1920 and sold it in June that year to Martin A. Ryerson of Chicago, who bequeathed it to the Art Institute in 1933. The museum first showed it that year as Sand Heaps, a title under which it is still known. It has since travelled to A Day in the Country in Los Angeles, Chicago and Paris in 1984–85 and to the Sisley retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, the Musée d'Orsay and the Walters Art Gallery in 1992–93.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to Mura's Coast and Countryside collection with a fresh mood: river, boats and sand in gentle rhythm.