Alfred Sisley, The Road to Montbuisson, Louveciennes

Sisley loved painting the landscape around Paris, and this picture captures a view looking down from a high hill in the village of Le Pecq.

Its most distinctive feature is a sky that takes up more than half the canvas. Sisley believed the sky was the single most important element in a landscape, not mere backdrop but the thing that lent the scene depth and movement and set its whole mood; he reportedly said, 'I always begin by painting the sky.'

He was also drawn to painting roads, wanting viewers to feel as though they could walk into the scene, and here the road seems to draw the eye straight into the picture. 'There is always a part of a painting that one loves,' Sisley once said, and he sought out places that held particular meaning for him to paint.