Alfred Sisley

Sisley was born in Paris to affluent British parents. His father, William Sisley, was in the silk business, and his mother, Felicia Sell, was a cultivated music connoisseur. In 1857, at the age of 18, Alfred Sisley was sent to London to study for a career in business, but he abandoned it after four years and returned to Paris in 1861. Sisley began painting as an amateur, from 1862, he studied at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts within the atelier of Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre where he began his association with Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Jean-Frédéric Bazille. Together they would paint landscapes en plein air rather than in the studio, in order to capture the transient effects of sunlight realistically. This approach, innovative at the time, resulted in paintings more colourful and more broadly painted than the public was accustomed to seeing.

In 1866, Sisley began a relationship with Eugénie Lescouezec (1834–1898; usually known as Marie Lescouezec), a Breton living in Paris. The couple had two children: son Pierre (born 1867) and daughter Jeanne (1869). At the time, Sisley lived not far from Avenue de Clichy and the Café Guerbois, the gathering-place of many Parisian painters.

In 1868, his paintings were accepted at the Salon, but the exhibition did not bring him financial or critical success; nor did subsequent exhibitions.

The Franco-German War of 1870–71 brought financial ruin to the Sisley family and caused Sisley to flee temporarily to London. At this period of crisis he decided to make painting his full-time career. The rest of his life was a constant struggle against poverty, as his paintings did not rise significantly in monetary value until after his death. Occasionally, however, Sisley would be backed by patrons, and this allowed him, among other things, to make a few brief trips to Britain. The first of these occurred in 1874, after the first independent Impressionist exhibition. The result of a few months spent near London was a series of nearly twenty paintings of the Upper Thames near Molesey, which was later described by art historian Kenneth Clark as “a perfect moment of Impressionism.”

Until 1880, Sisley lived and worked in the country west of Paris; then he 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 colored scenery of the Côte d’Azur.”

Sisley was essentially a landscape painter. His works can be distinguished from those of his colleagues by their softly harmonious values. His early style was much influenced by Camille Corot, and his restricted and delicate palette continued to reflect something of Corot’s silvery tonalities. His snowscapes are particularly effective. Much of his best and most spontaneous work was done in the period 1872–80 in the neighbourhood of Paris, at Marly, Louveciennes, Bougival, Sèvres, Saint-Cloud, and Meudon, at a time when he was in close touch with Monet.

He was inspired by the style and subject matter of previous modern painters Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet. Among the Impressionists, Sisley has been overshadowed by Monet, whose work his resembles in style and subject matter, although Sisley’s effects are more subdued.

In 1881, Sisley made a second brief voyage to Great Britain.

In 1897, Sisley and his partner visited Britain again, and were finally married in Wales at Cardiff Register Office on 5 August. They stayed at Penarth, where Sisley painted at least six oils of the sea and the cliffs. In mid-August they moved to the Osborne Hotel at Langland Bay on the Gower Peninsula, where he produced at least eleven oil paintings in and around Langland Bay and Rotherslade (then called Lady’s Cove). They returned to France in October. This was Sisley’s last voyage to his ancestral homeland.

The following year Sisley applied for French citizenship, but was refused. A second application was made and supported by a police report, but illness intervened, and Sisley remained a British national until his death.

He died on 29 January 1899 of throat cancer in Moret-sur-Loing at the age of 59, a few months after the death of his wife. His body was buried with that of his wife at Moret-sur-Loing Cemetery.

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. Sisley produced some 900 oil paintings, some 100 pastels and many other drawings.

In March 2017, Sisley’s painting Effet de neige à Louveciennes (1874) achieved $9,064,733 at Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London, setting the record price paid for a work by the artist.