Everything about Alfred Sisley totally explained
Alfred Sisley (
October 30,
1839 –
January 29,
1899) was a
French Impressionist landscape painter of
English origin, who lived most of his life in Paris. Sisley is recognized as perhaps the most consistent of the Impressionists, never deviating into
figure painting or finding that the movement didn't fulfill his artistic needs.
Life and work
Paris to affluent English parents; William Sisley was in the
silk business, and his mother Felicia Sell was a cultivated music
connoisseur. At the age of 18, Sisley was sent to London to study for a career in business, but he abandoned it after four years and returned to Paris. Beginning in 1862 he studied at the
atelier of Swiss artist
Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted with
Frédéric Bazille,
Claude Monet, and
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Together they'd paint landscapes
en plein air (in the open air) in order to realistically capture the transient effects of sunlight. This approach, innovative at the time, 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. Unlike some of his fellow students who suffered financial hardships, Sisley received an allowance from his father—until 1870, after which time he became increasingly poor. Sisley's student works are lost. His earliest known work,
Lane near a Small Town is believed to have been painted around 1864. His first landscape paintings are sombre, coloured with dark browns, greens, and pale blues. They were often executed at
Marly and
Saint-Cloud.
In 1866, he married Eugénie Lesouezec, a Breton, with whom he'd two children. His financial security vanished in 1870 when his father's business failed, and Sisley's sole means of support became the sale of his works. For the remainder of his life he'd live in poverty; his paintings rose significantly in monetary value only after his death. In 1880 Sisley and his family moved to a small village near
Moret-sur-Loing, close to the
forest of Fontainebleau where the painters of the
Barbizon school had worked earlier in the century. Here, as art historian Anne Poulet has said, "the gentle landscapes with their constantly changing atmosphere were perfectly attuned to his talents. Unlike Monet, he never sought the drama of the rampaging ocean or the brilliantly coloured scenery of the
Côte d'Azur."
Apart from the period spent in London between 1857 and 1861—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, as have
Gustave Courbet and
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Among the Impressionists Sisley has been overshadowed by Monet, whose work his most resembles, although 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.
Sisley died in
Moret-sur-Loing at the age of 59, just a few months after the death of his wife.
Works
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. Once in 1978 when on loan in Marseille (recovered a few days later in the city's sewers), once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years along with two accomplices) and in August 2007. It has yet to be recovered.
Selected works
Further Information
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