Alfred Sisley was a French Impressionist painter.
Sisley was born in Paris in 1839 to British parents. After schooling, he was sent to London for three years to prepare for a career in commerce. However, when this didn’t work out, he returned to Paris in 1862 and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Here, in the workshop of Charles Gleyre, he met Monet, Renoir and Bazille. With them, he would go and paint outside in Paris and in the surrounding countryside, particularly the forest of Fontainebleau.
In his early years, Sisley was comfortably off, receiving an allowance from his father who owned a business in Paris. However, his fortunes fell when his father’s business failed during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71. He likely also had many paintings from before this time destroyed. After this, he had to survive on the sales of his paintings, and lived in poverty for the rest of his life.
Sisley had two paintings accepted to the Salon in 1866, one of them being ‘Rue de Village à Marlotte’, shown here. However, this did not bring further success. Following the Franco-Prussian war, a group of like-minded artists, frustrated with rejection by the Salon, including Monet, Pissarro and Sisley set up the ‘Société Anonyme’. They had their first exhibition in 1874 and would go on to be known as the Impressionists. Sisley was one of the original Impressionists, exhibiting at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, as well as the next two.
In 1874, Sisley travelled to England and made a series of paintings along the Thames, including ‘Moseley Weir, Hampton Court’, shown here. In 1876 he made a series of paintings documenting flooding of the Seine at Port Marly on the outskirts of Paris. In 1880, Sisley moved to Moret-sur-Loing, south of Paris. Most of his later works were painted around this area.
Unlike many of the other impressionists, Sisley focused almost exclusively on landscapes, eschewing urban scenes or portraits. Big skies are often a central feature of his paintings.
While some of the other Impressionists began to increases in popularity later in life, Sisley’s works received little attention during his lifetime, with values only beginning to increase after his death. To this day he is still overshadowed by his contemporaries, particularly those who his work most resembles, Monet and Pissarro.
Alfred Sisley died in 1899 aged 59.
#Sisley #Impressionism #arthistory #art #Claritas
