At face value, this painting seems unoriginal. Sisley followed in the more talented Monet’s footsteps by painting a flood of the Seine River. In fact, Sisley himself had already painted the same town several times. Nonetheless, this piece is considered one of his greatest works.
Unlike most artists, he depicts a natural disaster without portraying a disaster. There are no marks of destruction. Calm blues and yellows create a sense of cheery normalcy. The boats resemble Venetian gondoliers. If the viewer ignores the lettering on the side of the wine shop, he may easily mistake the scene for Venice—where residents are pleasantly accustomed to river-streets.
Sisley also unifies two landscapes in one greater whole: the bright, yellow and blue wine shop on the right joins the subdued, half-submerged, grey trees on the left. Anonymously indefinite, bluish men leaning over long gray boats among small trees compose a natural middle ground. The initial unified simplicity of the painting reveals, upon further inspection, a wonderful balance of similar colors harmonizing dissimilar parts.
