At Alfred Sisley’s (Moret-sur-Loing)

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First of all I’d like to wish a very happy new year full of peace, love, benevolence and happiness!

Do you remember this Norman house that I’ve talked to you about 1 year ago? I finished 2015 and started 2016 in a country house a bit like this one and steeped in history with a big H.

But what is so special about this house? It’s the house where the famous impressionist painter, Alfred Sisley, lived with his family from 1892 till his death in 1899, can you believe it?!

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It’s thanks to my friend Lauren that 5 other friends, the Boyfriend and I we met in this house where one of Lauren’s cousins currently lives, to spend the 1st weekend of the year. Here it is the 2nd chapter of the Normandy Team.

One year after spending a dreamy weekend in the Norman house, a part of the friend group met again in the countryside, but this time without leaving Paris suburb because it’s in Moret-sur-Loing, a small city of the Seine & Marne department that they stayed for the weekend.

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the view from the garden

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the former workshop of A. Sisley

 

It’s in this beautiful country house where Alfred Sisley lived that the friends celebrated new year’s eve with homemade meals, snails, cheese gougers, Yule logs with champagne and good wines. They changed maps, dances, sang and kissed under the mistletoe.

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The rest of the weekend they fully benefited from the small pleasures of life like roasting marshmallows in the fireplace, chopping wood, reading next to a warm fire, putting on Korean beauty masks and laughing out loud and most of all sharing their experiences and cultures because the friends all came from different countries (Belgium, Italy, USA, India, Singapour and France).

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Finally they strolled of course in Moret streets to find out why Sisley liked this place that much. Here this is what he wrote to his friend Tavernier on the 19th of January 1892 about Moret :

«Soon it will be 12 years that I’ve been in Moret and its surroundings. It is in Moret, faced by such dense vegetation, its large poplars, the water of the Loing, so beautiful, so transparent, so changeable, it is undoubtedly in Moret that I have made the greatest progress in my art; particularly in the last three years. Then, even though it is my intention to increase my field of study, I will never fully leave this place so picturesque.”

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flood history of Moret (to give you a better idea, the Boyfriend is quite tall : 1m87)

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I did a leakage testing in the Loing river of m Aigle boots and I confirm that they are 100%  waterproof! :) 

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Maison Raccolet

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the city hall

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the town hall

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Notre-Dame church

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barley sugar museum

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Provencher windmill on the right

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Porte de Bourgogne 

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a bark mill

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Alfred Sisley’s painting – « Moret’s bridge » (1893) – painting oil currently in Orsay Museum in Paris 

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The friends let themselves be carried by the magic of this small town and immediately understood why Alfred Sisley fell in love with this romantic place. They swore that they will continue to spend bucolic weekends together in the countryside and went back the the City of Lights with a heavy heart but lightheaded.

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Le Rital, Lauren, Mathieu, Franklin, Jasmine, Preeti

THE END

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