Alfred Sisley
1839 -1899
Alfred Sisley was an English Impressionist landscape painter living and working in France, was one of the creators of French Impressionism.
Sisley was born in Paris to English parents, William Sisley and Felicia Sell. After his schooldays, his father, a merchant trading with the southern states of America, sent him to London for a business career between 1857 and 1861. In 1862, having decided to become a painter, his family gave him every support, sending him to Gleyre's studio, where he met Renoir, Monet and Bazille. The friends often worked together in the open air in the Forest of Fontainebleau, at Chailly. They wanted to realistically capture transient effects of sunlight; which resulted in paintings more colorful and more broadly painted than the public was accustomed to seeing. Consequently, Sisley and his friends initially had few opportunities to exhibit or sell their work.
Sisley's student works are lost. His earliest known work, "Lane near a Small Town" is believed to have been painted around 1864. His style at this time was deeply influenced by Courbet and Daubigny, and when he first exhibited at the Salon in 1867 it was as the pupil of Corot.
Among the Impressionists Sisley has been overshadowed by Monet. Sisley was less experimental, and tended to work on a smaller scale. Described by art historian Robert Rosenblum as having "almost a generic character, an impersonal textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting", his work strongly invokes atmosphere and his skies are always very impressive. His concentration on landscape subjects was the most consistent of any of the Impressionists.
Apart from a period spent in London in 1857-61-and brief trips to England in 1874, 1881, and 1897-Sisley lived his entire life in France. Little is known about his relationship with the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, which he may well have seen in London, although these artists have been suggested as an influence on his development as an Impressionist painter.
It was only towards the end of his life, that he received something approaching the recognition he deserved. In 1899, he died in Moret-sur-Loing of a cancer of the throat, at the age of 59. Within a year his canvases were fetching high prices.
Among Sisley's best known works are "Street in Moret" and "Sand Heaps", both owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, and "The Bridge at Moret-sur-Loing" shown at Musée d'Orsay, Paris. "Allée des peupliers de Moret" ("The Lane of Poplars at Moret") has been stolen three times from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice.
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