| The Forge at Marly-le-Roi | |
| Artist: | Alfred Sisley |
| Year: | 1875 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 55 |
| Width Metric: | 73 |
| Dimensions Ref: | [1] |
| Museum: | Musée d'Orsay |
| City: | Paris |
The Forge at Marly-le-Roi is an oil on canvas painting by British-born French artist Alfred Sisley, created in 1875. It was part of the François Depeaux collection until its sale in 1906 by the Galerie Georges Petit to Étienne Moreau-Nélaton. Moreau-Nélaton left it to the French state later in 1906 and it has been displayed at the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris, since 1986.[1]
The painting was painted at the bottom of the Grande Rue de Marly-le-Roi, adjoining the Hôtel de Toulouse, at number 48, where there was a forge, nowadays transformed into a garage.
Sisley was mainly a landscape painter, like fellow Impressionist Claude Monet, so an intimate canvas by him dedicated to on human activities is rare.[2] Among his around of 800 listed canvases, French Art historian Sylvie Patin counts only three interior views, The Lesson (1871), The Interior of a Farm in Moret (1880), and this one, which testifies the interest of the artist for simple people while living in Marly-le-Roi.[3]
The lighting of the scene comes from the window, some panes of which are closed, and from the glowing forge. For the art historian Jean-Jacques Lévêque, "the treatment of chiaroscuro is exceptional in the work of an artist so lost in light, and so adept at capturing it".[3]