Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Alfred Sisley was the only major Impressionist artist who came to Wales to paint. He came to marry his long-term partner, Eugénie Lescouezec. By 1897 they were both facing ill health, and travelled to Britain to marry and quietly legitimise their children. The couple spent the summer in south Wales, staying at Penarth and later honeymooning at Langland Bay. In Penarth they stayed with a Mrs Thomas, a coal merchant. In a letter to critic Gustave Geffroy, Sisley said ‘the countryside is pretty and the Roads, with the big ships sailing in and out of Cardiff, is superb’ – though he did complain that the beds were uncomfortable, and the weather too hot! Sisley produced six paintings during his short stay at Penarth, working on several canvases simultaneously, exploring different light and weather effects. This view was painted from the clifftop walk linking Penarth and Lavernock, where just a few months earlier Guglielmo Marconi made history by transmitting the world’s first radio signal. This painting not only shows the Welsh landscape through the eyes of an Impressionist, it is also one of Sisley’s rare surviving seascapes, and is the first of his Welsh views to enter a public collection in Britain.