Madame Sisley on the banks of the Loing at Moret

One of the most significant expatriate Australian artists in fin-de-siècle Europe, Russell first trained in London before moving to Paris in the 1880s to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. There he became interested in the work of the Impressionists, applying their approaches to colour and subject to his own work. In 1887 he spent some time at Moret, a small village south of Paris by the Loing River, where he stayed in a villa next door to the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley. There he made a number of paintings, including this which shows Sisley's wife Marie, painted with the broken brushstrokes and high palette of the Impressionists.