Many prominent Impressionist painters lived or kept summer homes in the western suburbs of Paris in the late 1800’s. Berthe Morrisot, Mary Cassatt, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet lived or painted in the area.

It is easy to reach this area by train or rental car. I prefer renting a car (with GPS, bien sûr) so I can hit several different cities in the same day. You can easily drive from Chatou to Bougival, Marly-le-Roi, Rueil-Malmaison and Louveciennes in one day. Click here for another post I wrote about a day trip to Chatou, the site where Renoir painted Luncheon of the Boating Party.

Alfred Sisley lived in Marly-le-Roi, a close-in suburb just west of Paris in the 1870s. Marly-le-Roi was once the home of Louis XIV’s summer palace, but it was destroyed during the French Revolution. Louis XIV built a huge aqueduct called the Machine de Marly, which brought water up from the Seine to the chateaux of Versailles and Marly. The machine is no longer standing but the basins remain.

Alfred Sisley painted The Chemin de la Machine, Louveciennes (Musée D’Orsay) in 1873. You can find a sign commemorating the very spot where Sisley’s easel stood. It is part of a tourist initiative called the Pays des Impressionistes. Today, the road is still called Rue de la Machine, easily found on Google Maps.

The scene of Sisley’s Chemin de la Machine, Louveciennes (1873). We might have electrical street lights and more mature trees, but the slope of the street is still recognizable.

If you’re like me, it’s inspiring to stand in the place of a famous painting. I rarely bring along my own easel because I’m not an en plein aire painter, but I’m still inspired when I get back to my own art studio. I gain a lot from the experience, studying how a good painter selects a scene and creates a good sense of composition out of what would other wise be a random slice of life. It is no accident that these paintings still make an impression on us more than 125 years later.

Making art out of the randomness of life. The challenge and calling of an artist.