In 1895, Pissarro wrote, ‘I remain, with Sisley, like a trail end of Impressionism.’ The words, ‘Trail end’ are used simply because when Impressionism reached the end of the century, it became more transformed, reconstructed, and renounced due to which the actual movement no longer existed. Furthermore, Pissarro used these words because these two painters had yet to experience the renown, that most of their fellow artists already got by this time. And lastly, a ‘trail end’ too because they were the only two artists who kept faith with the pictorial principles of their early days. Indeed, when Matisse asked Pissarro, ‘Who is really an Impressionist?’ He replied, ‘Sisley.’ An artist, who was most neglected in the entire French Impressionism movement despite his mesmerizing artworks. Perhaps his life and personality were not well documented, unlike other Impressionists, and he died earlier than he got recognition and rewards. Painting landscapes almost exclusively, he chose quiet corners of villages, rivers, and fields of Île-de-France as the subject. Widely known for his artworks of floods at Port-Marly and his views of the Seine and of the Thames, he achieved an indisputable perfection of tone and poetry through his exceptional paintings. Sir Kenneth Clark once described his paintings as, ‘the perfect moment of Impressionism.’ From this perspective, Sisley is not only a charming and minor landscapist but also a powerful and original artist. Hence, to celebrate the true spirit of Impressionism through originality, let us go through the life of Alfred Sisley.
Alfred Sisley | Fast Knowledge
Alfred Sisley (1839-99) was an Impressionist artist who usually painted quiet subjects like river views and villages where he manifested human presence. Sisley’s landscapes are known for their ability to capture the most out of an atmosphere and light effects with delightful expressionism in them.
Artist Abstract: Alfred Sisley.
Born in Paris on 30 October 1839, Alfred Sisley was the son of an affluent British expatriate, and though he spent four years of his early maturing in England, he returned to France in 1861 and remained there for the rest of his life. Alfred’s mother, Felicia Sell, was a music connoisseur, whereas his father, William Sisley, had a lucrative business of exporting artificial flowers and silk. Little is known about the artist’s early life as he was sent to London to study in 1857 to build a career in commerce. However, he spent visiting exhibitions of John Constable and J. M. W. Turner at The National Gallery. Sisley’s life and work are inextricable from the Impressionist movement with all its legends.
Usually preferring gentle rural scenery and landscapes of river views and villages in which the human presence was manifested, Sisley, in the 1870s, concentrated on subjects along the countryside to the west of Paris. Now, the lack of success of the artist can be attributed to his preference for subdued, unspectacular landscapes, which were essentially his only subject matter. Had he painted those dramatic colorful effects of sunlight or seascapes, he might have enjoyed the attention that he deserved. His work was marked and dynamic in its own way, as he showed an unremitting sadness through his landscapes.
We will learn about his entire life in the following sections of the article.
| Artist | Alfred Sisley |
| Birth | October 30, 1839 |
| Death | January 29, 1899 |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Landscape Paintings |
| Period | Impressionism |
| Famous Paintings | Flood at Port-Marly, Haystacks at Moret Morning |
Life of the Impressionist Painter, Sisley.
Beginning his life in a comfortable environment, Alfred Sisley was the son of a successful English businessman in Paris. However, after a few years, his father’s firm collapsed in the Franco-Prussian War, which resulted in Sisley and his family being thrown into a state of penury, that lasted almost to the end of his life when Alfred died of cancer of the throat at the age of sixty.
Though born in 1839 in the same year as Cézanne, Alfred was a little older than Monet and Renoir while a little younger than Manet and Degas. His mother came from a cultured background, but his father had a business background, which ensured that art was never the right career option for Alfred. There is very little information on the childhood of the artist.
At 18, Alfred Sisley moved to London as a part of his apprenticeship in business, but he was more attracted to the artworks of great English landscape artists like Constable, Turner, and Bonington, which he saw in London’s museums and art galleries. He was also interested in Dutch landscape artists. Sisley returned to Paris in 1861 after a trip to his hometown, after he persuaded his parents to give him consent to his pursuing career as an artist. He joined Gleyre’s Atelier in October of the same year, and by December, he enjoyed a dinner party given by Bazille, where he met Monet and Renoir. By the next easter, the budding Impressionist left for Gleyre’s, and Sisley, with his friends, moved to the Fontainebleau Forest at Chailly painting landscapes en Plein-air. He combined his English traditions of landscape paintings with the new techniques of Impressionists to evolve his art.
By 1866, Sisley exhibited two of his works at his first Salon. Though he worked closely with Monet at this time, he developed his own palette, a subdued one, which portrayed his calmness and reserved temperament. Shortly after the 1866 exhibition at the Salon, he married young Parisienne Marie Lescouezec, who would bear him two children, Pierre and Jeanne. After two years, Sisleys started living in the Rue de la Paix in the Batignolles, and Renoir painted a large composition to convey the gentleness of Sisley and devotion to his wife. In the late 1860s, Alfred participated in the Batignolles group meetings in the Café Guerbois. He didn’t work under pressure to achieve financial success with his work. In 1873, Sisley became a member of the Societe Anonyme, but by this time, his life took completely a different course.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 brought a downfall in the business of William Sisley and inaugurated a long period of struggle for his son, Alfred Sisley, and his family. Since William had been taken ill and his business crumbled, Alfred was forced to paint for his living. However, Monet and Pissarro were fortunate to meet a sympathetic dealer, Durand-Ruel, in London during the war, who introduced him to Sisley and provided a moderate number of sales, but not enough to resume his leisurely life, which he lived before. In the years following the war, Sisley’s output of landscape paintings around his Louveciennes residence increased exponentially.
In the first impressionist exhibition opened in 1874, Sisley represented five of his paintings, but they were overshadowed by the “tongue-lickings” of Monet and other “scandalous paintings.” Besides, in July, Sisley took a trip to England, which produced the most colorful views of the Thames and the regattas at Hampton Court. Sisley continued to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1876, 1877, and 1882. From 1874 to 1877, when he began to live with his family at Marly-le-Roi, he produced the finest of his artworks, which portrayed floods that periodically inundated the area.
Sisley took part in four of the great Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1882, and then finally, in the 1880s, he decided to go alone. These last years were difficult for him financially as he wasn’t even able to buy a house for his family. Because his subject matter was limited and restrained, he never attracted the admiration, that Monet, Renoir, and Degas received. But other artists did see his worth. When Manet’s brother, Eugène Manet, saw his 27 pictures in the 1882 Impressionist exhibition, he said that they were,
“the most complete and show great progress. He has a lake or canal bordered by trees, which is an authentic masterpiece.”
Another painting, which Sisley exhibited got the comment of his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, later in 1883 in Copenhagen that it was,
“so delicately light and shimmery, so harmonious in composition, that one could find no fault in it. Here is no attempt to paint anything that could not be made out by the naked eye. The painting achieves its effect by means of airy lightness and unique beauty.”
Though Sisley never found that kind of acceptance as an artist, by the early 1890s, he was elected to honorary membership of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890. In 1897, when he took his last trip to England and Wales, a major series of his work at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris sold nothing. The following year, Sisley was too ill to paint and saw his beloved wife die of cancer of the throat. Less than four months later, in January 1899, he died of throat cancer too. But just before this, he called his old friend, Claude Monet, to his bedside to say final goodbyes and asked him to take care of his children after his death. Three months after Sisley’s death, the paintings, which he left in his studio were auctioned to raise money for his children. The painting Flood at Port-Marly alone was sold for 43,000 francs, nearly half of the amount of all twenty-seven of his paintings sold the year before in 1900. After his death, a re-assessment of Alfred Sisley’s paintings was done, and every art critic found that Sisley was an Impressionist who painted like no one else.
The art critic Wynford Dewhurst rightly said,
“Rare are the artists who distinguish themselves in every branch of art, lucky the man who excelled in one. An example of the latter is Sisley, ‘paysagiste‘ pure and simple, who has left a legacy of some of the most fascinating landscapes ever painted.”
Briefly Analyzing Alfred Sisley Paintings.
1. Women Going to the Wood, 1866.
One of the earliest surviving Alfred Sisley paintings, dating from 1865, it shows a village scene where three women at the center return home after collecting wood. Alfred Sisley painted this artwork when he was in his mid-twenties and three years out of his artistic apprenticeship in Gleyre’s studio. I already told you earlier that this was a similar time when he was accompanied by Renoir, Monet, and Bazille, spending most of his time in the forest of Fontainebleau and its villages. The artwork shows the influence of the painters of the Barbizon school, especially Corot. This painting shows a darker palette with a heavy appliance on the canvas. It shows a lighter sky with an apparent use of sunlight in the scenery.
2. View of Montmartre from Cité des Fleurs to Les Batignolles, 1869.
Having a medium of oil on canvas, this Alfred Sisley painting shows the view from Sisley’s apartment window in the Cite des Fleurs in the new Paris arrondissement of Les Batignolles, portraying the artist’s continued development of his own style. In the flat planes of color and rather dark palette, traces of Corot and the Barbizon School can still be seen. Despite this, what would become hallmarks of Sisley’s style at its best can be seen here in more than a hint. The artwork portrays a vast sky with a quiet, greyish horizon, with an attempt to create a bucolic atmosphere in this outer suburb of Paris. Since Cite des Fleurs was the first home Sisley and Marie Lescouezec had after they married, and Batignolles was becoming a favorite locality for the young artists of Sisley’s generation. In this painting, the famous Moulin de la Galette stands out on the horizon of Montmartre, not far from their favorite cafe, the Guerbois.
3. Footbridge at Argenteuil.
Today, Aregenteuil is an industrialized suburb but in the 19th century, it was an attractive village on the Seine on the outskirts of Paris. The place was famous for its relaxed riverside charm with its stunning cafes and bathing places, which attracted the attention of most of the Parisians and Sisley’s group of artists. The place was the right spot to paint the light effects over the river and tree-lined banks. The artwork shows a bridge with a riverside in a darker and more grey sky above with men and women across the bridge. The people here are wrapped in drab-colored clothes with an atmosphere of steady purpose rather than pleasure seeking. The rural setting is an absolute masterpiece portraying the slow life of Argenteuil, which is tranquil and beautiful.
4. Louveciennes, Heights of Marly.
At Chailly, Alfred Sisley worked with Frederic Bazille, and later at Marlotte near Fontainebleau with Renoir, with whom he lodged at Anthony’s. As far as Le Havre, the two companions traveled by boat down the Seine in 1865. Sisley painted at Argenteuil before moving to Louveciennes in 1871, where he developed his personality after being influenced by Corot.
The artwork depicts a path descending between houses surrounded by gardens, which is both enchanting and moving. In Alfred Sisley paintings, one feels the artist’s insatiable love of nature, his enjoyment in the presence of a visual reality that has almost become musical to him. This is the closest a painting has ever come to music in terms of brushstrokes. Throughout the painting, a painter’s joy enhances his subject, a pretext for a lyricism that manifests in gray slate roofs, stone paths, and a profusion of blue-green foliage. Aren’t the woman and the landscape transposed into each other by the artist himself, who pauses time to capture the moment? Eugène Murer, friends of the four musketeers of Impressionism- Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley said at last,
“If Claude Monet had not been his friend and contemporary, he would have been the most perfect landscapist of the end of the last century. Sisley knew this and had the weakness sometimes to show a little bitterness toward his illustrious comrade. But although of second rank, he is all the same a very great artist, full of feeling and light.”
5. Boat Races at Molesey.
This Alfred Sisley painting marks a singular freedom of the artist. He depicts the swiftly rowing oarsmen with fresh and rapid brushstrokes. With the large flags flapping in the wind, Alfred skillfully contrasted the judges’ verticals in the foreground and the strollers’ spots on the mound on the other bank with boatmen’s oblique movements. The painting marks the time when Sisley’s paintings were sold for between fifty and three hundred francs.
Particularly at this time, Alfred used a lighter shade of palette with few contrasts to give a subtle character to the painting. There is a joy in the canvas with varied brushstrokes, making this artwork one of a kind.
6. Snow at Louveiennes.
When it comes to snow effects, Alfred Sisley dominated the entire artistic movement. This painting portrays a flaky landscape where a viewer is struck by the evocative quality of his art. There is an unusualness in the painting as it is no less than poetry. The woman coming towards us in the misty and shining white snow under her large umbrella is no less than a dreamy landscape, which the artist portrayed really well. It feels as if there is a symphony between the snow covering the ground and the motion of the woman. It engages an everyday nature scene with a moment shrouded with a white mystery. Paul Signac commented on this painting, which was exhibited at Durand-Ruel in April 1899,
“It is obvious that he was the first and foremost to divide his palette.”
7. A Path in the Gardens of By.
In 1881, during the spring and summer at Veneux-Nadon, Alfred Sisley tirelessly painted this artwork, depicting meadows, orchards, village scenes, and of course, the river. The riverbank of Veneux-Nadon had a disused towpath alongside an old ferry crossing at By; this became the subject of several paintings, including this delightful summer scene based on a palette of blue, green, and pink, lit with typical Sisley touches of yellow-cream, used for a great effect on the right of the picture, to enhance the movement of the trees and draw attention to the building on the water’s edge. In March 1882, a major exhibition of the work of the Impressionists was organized by Gustave Caillebotte in Paris featuring many of Sisley’s paintings made at Venuex-Nadon in 1881.
8. September Morning.
An impression of the countryside in the Île-de-France at an especially attractive time of year, when the almost too-green shades of summer give way to the gentler hues of early autumn. In this painting, Sisley continues the pastoral theme that had run through his work since he arrived in the Loing and started a series of paintings displaying Moret viewed from around the countryside. In several of these pictures, the figure of a young woman is the focal point; in this picture, the woman appears in a light-colored building. The sky dominates this painting, however, Sisley’s unrivaled ability to capture light makes it the central focal point.
Final Words.
Alfred Sisley was one of the finest impressionists, who used a subdued color palette in his later years of life. Though hardly keeping up with good financial situations and the lack of recognition usually led an emotional distress, he still managed to remain lovable and friendly among people. His art had a consolation and freedom through rural imagery with leaves, grass, shrubs, and the morning sunlight on the field. Died early, he is still known for his splendid days, lovable friends, and light and active brushwork, which transformed Impressionist art. Sisley through his artworks brought an unforgettable subdued landscape, snow scenes, and riversides, which we still can’t manage to overlook.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Alfred Sisley majorly faced financial troubles for most of his adult life, often requesting a modest sum of money. After his father’s business crumbled in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, his financial conditions deteriorated.
Alfred Sisley lived till the age of sixty. He died due to throat cancer, three months after the death of his beloved wife, Maria. After his death, his paintings were analyzed again by the art critics, which gave him great recognition in the Impressionist art.
At first, Alfred Sisley was inspired by the English landscape painters like Constable, Turner, and Bonington, which he saw in London’s museums and art galleries. In his adult life, he was influenced by Camille Corot, Monet, and Gustave Courbet.
Resources.
- The Impressionists by Robert Katz.
- The Life and Works of Sisley by Janice Anderson.
- Alfred Sisley by Artemis Group and Richard Nathanson.
- Impressionism by Pierre Courthion.
- Featured Image: Near Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley, Alfred Sisley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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