Topic: Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley (30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899) was an English Impressionist landscape painter who was born, and spent most of his life, in France. Sisley is generally recognized as the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs.

Among his most important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton, executed in 1874, and various landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing.

Sisley was born in Paris to affluent English 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, 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. 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 would paint landscapes en plein air rather than in the studio, 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. Their works were usually rejected by the jury of the most important art exhibition in France, the annual Salon. During the 1860s, though, Sisley was in a better position than some of his fellow artists, for he received an allowance from his father.