Alfred Sisley's Hampton Court paintings - part 2

Under the bridge at Hampton Court, Alfred Sisley 1874

View from under the old Hampton Court Bridge 2016

The three indentations in the brickwork on the opposite bank are remnants of the old bridge which was replaced in 1933. The Mitre Hotel is the main building on the other side of the bridge. It can also be seen in the painting below. The front of the Mitre Hotel looks unchanged from when Sisley painted it in 1874.  It was built in 1665.

The Bridge at Hampton Court, Alfred Sisley, 1874

Regatta at Hampton Court, Alfred Sisley, 1874

Sisley's viewpoints for the above three paintings were quite close together. This can be seen from the position of the flag pole in each of the paintings. This postcard shows that Sisley must have set up his easel in front of the Castle Hotel, which was demolished to make way for the new bridge.

The Castle Hotel and Hampton Court Bridge c1900

In the following image the overlap between two of Sisley's paintings has been removed. The merge is imperfect because of the difference in Sisley's viewpoints.

Merged paintings showing Barge Walk in 1874 

Pictures taken from Sisley's two viewpoints today would only show the underneath of the new bridge. The following is the view from a bit further along the Thames. The Mitre Hotel and the other building near the bridge in Sisley's painting can be seen just above the new bridge in the 2016 photo.

Hampton Court Bridge and Barge Walk 2016

The building next to Barge Walk in Sisley's paintings was built in 1529. It contained some of the Palace offices, kitchens and stores.  It can be seen on the following map between the labels for the The Mitre Hotel and the Cavalry Barracks, but it is not on the 1890s map.

Hampton Court 1866-68

This building was part of the Outer Green Court. It was decided in the 1840s to demolish these old buildings, but the last building - the one on the above map - was only demolished in 1879 when the occupant died. She was the widow of Nelson's Captain Hardy and had been a "grace and favour" resident, i.e. a distinguished person, or a relative of a distinguished person,  who had been granted free accommodation at Hampton Court by the monarch. The Outer Green Court is now just lawn.

Sisley moved further down the river to paint the following picture. The view of Hampton Court Bridge is blocked by trees and I presume that the white building in the distance is the Mitre Hotel or one of its neighbouring buildings. But what is the building in the foreground? It doesn't look like Hampton Court Palace to me. Perhaps it might be the Outer Green Office. Is that the flagpole Sisley painted in the paintings above ?

The Thames at Hampton Court, Alfred Sisley 1874

Hampton Court Palace 2016

The Mitre Hotel is can be seen in the distance.  In the next photo the Mitre Hotel is blocked by trees.

 Hampton Court Palace 2016

Alfred Sisley's Hampton Court paintings - part 1

Inn at East Molesey with Hampton Court Bridge Alfred Sisley 1874

This picture puzzled me.  I thought I knew Hampton Court like the back of my hand, but I couldn't fit that Inn into my mental map of the area. I would have expected to see the Mitre Hotel there with Hampton Court Palace behind me to the right. In fact, Sisley was on the other side of the river looking in the opposite direction towards Hampton Court Palace.

This is the same view in 2016. The new bridge is on the left and Hampton Court railway station can be seen in the background. Part of Sisley's bridge can still be seen next to the tree.

The Inn in Sisley's painting was the Castle Hotel, which can be seen as the white building next to the bridge in the postcard below. The building with the conical turret in the postcard is the building in the foreground of the above photo.The cone has been removed.

 Hampton Court Bridge c1900

This map from c1890 is quite surprising for those who think they know this area. The river flowing into the Thames is the Mole. It no longer flows into the Thames. When the new bridge was built in 1933 the Mole was diverted to flow into the River Ember and the course shown on the map was filled in with rubble some of which came from the demolished Castle Hotel. The old course of the Mole is now the approach road to the new bridge.

Hampton Court Bridge c1890

On the left of the 1920 photo below you can see the old bridge and next to it the Mole flowing into the Thames. The Ember is the river in the centre and on the right of the photo. It flows into the Thames opposite Hampton Court Palace.

Britain from Above - Hampton Court 1920

The Road from Gennevilliers, Alfred Sisley 1872

The Road from Gennevilliers, Alfred Sisley 1872

This is the view from the same viewpoint in 2016.

St Denis side of the bridge at Villeneuve-La-Garenne

Sisley seemed to have painted this in a hurry. The buildings on the left of the bridge were not accurately painted. For example, the building we can see between the furthest tree and the end of the bridge is four windows wide in the painting, but photographs of that building show that it was three windows wide. This can be seen in the following postcard.

Villeneuve-La-Garenne suspension bridge c1900

The hut on the left of Sisley's painting can be seen in the postcard below. The man standing on the left pavement under the tree is probably on the spot where Sisley set up his easel.

Rue Mechin, L'Île-Saint-Denis c1910

Rue Mechin, L'Île-Saint-Denis 2016

The hut is gone but the buildings on the left look the same. In fact, judging from the photo below they seem to have benefited from far less "progress" on this side of the bridge. The green area on the right of the 1970s photo has been replaced by a large block of flats, but many of the old houses leading up to the bridge are still there.

L'Île-Saint-Denis looking towards Villeneuve-la-Garenne 1970s

Village on the Seine, Alfred Sisley, 1872

 "Village on the Seine" Alfred Sisley 1872

Sisley's "Village on the Seine" is a continuation of the view in his painting "The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne".  This can be seen when the two paintings are merged and the overlap is removed.

 Quai d'argenteuil, Villeneuve-la-Garenne 1872

 The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne Alfred Sisley 1872

This c1909 postcard shows all the buildings in the merged image of Sisley's two paintings.

 Quai d'argenteuil (now called Quai Alfred Sisley) c1909

The road in the middle of the above postcard which branches off Quai Alfred Sisley is named after Henri Barbusse,  a communist who in the 1930s wrote a ludicrous biography full of praise for the wonderful new world his hero Stalin  created in the USSR. Malcolm Muggeridge met Barbusse in Moscow in the early 1930s. By that time the scales had fallen from Muggeridge's eyes and he saw the regime for being "one of the most thorough-going, ruthless, and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on Earth".  Those like Barbusse who continued to support Stalin had in Muggeridge's words "resolved ... to abolish themselves and their world". That fairly well describes certain types today.

Naming a road after such an idiot gives one an idea about the mentality of the authorities in Villeneuve-la-Garenne. Yet despite the council's commitment to destroying their town a few of the houses in Sisley's painting are still with us in 2016.

This is the house on the far right of the  "Village on the Seine". It is also on the far right of the postcard above.

Quai Alfred Sisley 2014

This is the house shown hidden behind the trees in the postcard and the painting. In the painting the grey band can be seen around the top windows. The narrow house on the left of the photo below might also be a survivor from Sisley's painting.

Quai Alfred Sisley 2008

Some of the houses in Sisley's paintings can be see in this postcard. The tabac on the left is the cream building at the centre of his "Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne".

This was the same view in 2014. At least the trees look very nice.

This early 20th century postcard also shows some of Sisley's houses.

This was the same view in 2013.

Quai Alfred Sisley, Villeneuve-la-Garenne 2013

The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne Alfred Sisley, 1872

 The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Alfred Sisley 1872

The following  postcard shows that this beautiful masterpiece by Alfred Sisley was a realistic view of Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

 Villeneuve-la-Garenne   c1914

This is the view from the same viewpoint as the above postcard in 2015.

Villeneuve-la-Garenne 2015

Everything in Sisley's painting is now gone. The suspension bridge was replaced in 1903. All the other buildings probably went in the 1960s. Villeneuve-la-Garenne is now all skyscrapers apart from a few older houses along the Seine. The original inhabitants and their descendants have either moved away or they are resting in the graveyard in the photo shown below.

The suspension bridge in Sisley's painting was built in 1844. Before that Villeneuve-la-Garenne was just a tiny fishing hamlet.

 Part of [Plan du terroir de] La Ville Neuve la Garenne 1750

I think plot 36 in the above map corresponds to the position of the buildings at the centre of Sisley's painting. The gap between the two main buildings with an older building set back between the gap certainly matches the painting and the postcards.

 Villeneuve-la-Garenne  1800

This 1883 map shows that eleven years after Sisley's painting Villeneuve-la-Garenne was still just a scattering of houses next to the Seine. Even St Denis was still in the countryside.

Villeneuve-la-Garenne 1883

In the 1860s Villeneuve-la-Garenne and the area around Genevilliers became the "beneficiary" of an enormous amount of Paris sewage.  It was pumped into the fields at a rate of eight hundred litres per second.  The sewage increased the farmer's yields so I imagine they were grateful for it - especially as Paris had magnanimously declared there would be no charge for now  - but I suspect the rest of the population were not so happy. I think there are veterans from the Korean war who are still traumatised by the stench of human waste spread on rice fields. It would have done nothing for the tourist trade in Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

In the following map the irrigated fields in green and the pipes in blue.

 Irrigated fields around Villeneuve-la-Garenne in 1876

Gradually the village began to expand. In the photo below some buildings can be seen further back from the river.

 Villeneuve-la-Garenne c1905

In January of 1910 the whole village was flooded. The increase in the height of the water can be seen in these two postcards. The two structures nearest the camera in the flood picture can be seen on the left of the second postcard where they are both well above the level of the river.

The tabac on the right in the photo below is the cream building in Sisley's painting. That tabac and the hotel opposite, which can be seen under and over the bridge in the painting, survived the flood and two world wars. They were probably thriving well into the 1960s.

 Tabac and La Belle Gabrielle 1910s

Tabac 1920s

 Tabac 1930s or 1940s

Tabac and La Belle Gabrielle 1950s

Alas, this was all too French and too individualistic looking. The town planners - who were mainly communists - wanted to create a completely uniform environment where everything and everyone was easily controllable.  People living in their towns would be like insects in a hive. This eyesore was an example of their brand new world.

Villeneuve-la-Garenne1960s

 Villeneuve-la-Garenne  1970s

That enormously long block of flats was called La Caravelle. Although the building's architect, Jean Dubuisson (1914-2011), won many prizes for this and other monstrosities in his long career the unfortunate inhabitants of La Caravelle were rather less appreciative. Tenant satisfaction in these places is usually measured by the number of stones thrown at the police each night. La Caravelle had a particularly high stone count.

Dubuisson's style of architecture was described as "totalitarian functionalism" by Roland Castro, the architect who changed La Caravelle in 2003 into smaller blocks of flats. I suspect Castro's comment was meant to be praise rather than disparagement. Castro was, and still may be for all I know, a Maoist. He is the leader of something called "The Movement of the Concrete Utopia". The ideology of this movement has been summarized in 89 principles. Just a glance at three of these principles gives one an idea of the nonsense and contractions in the other 86 : move towards world government (77),  the citizens must rebel against the power of the state (88) and make famine illegal (17).

In 1997 Dubuisson blamed the failure of La Caravelle on the tenants. The managers of La Caravelle were "pas toujours très vigilants sur le choix des locataires." Dubuisson thought the tenants should be middle class,  presumably  with an appreciation of Corbusien aesthetics, rather than poor Third World immigrants.

There are Sisley paintings of places near me which have remained mainly unchanged for nearly 150 years and there are place like Villeneuve-la-Garenne that are changed completely. Why is one place conserved and another destroyed? The answer is that in the destroyed places power has been concentrated in the hands of a small group of utopian fanatics whereas in the conserved places there is really no one person in charge and change is allowed to happen gradually in accordance with the wishes of the majority. Villeneuve-la-Garenne had the same man in charge from 1953 to 1999. Mayor Roger Prévot (1914-1999) was like Croydon's Sir James Marshall. In the pursuit of progress they both destroyed their towns.