The Forge at Marly-le-Roi

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.

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.

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".