Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)
Sisley was a landscape painter in the Impressionist Movement. His parents were English expatriates.
Born into a well-to-do family, Sisley was sent at age eighteen to London to study business. After four years, he returned to Paris in 1861 and studied at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts with Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre. While there, he met Frederic Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
They became interested in painting landscapes en plein air with the intention of realistically capturing transient effects of sunlight. Their paintings were rejected by the annual Salon exhibit. Critics tagged their paintings as ‘impressionist’ and the name stuck.
Sisley studied the works of John Constable and J. M. W. Turner. He was inspired by the works of Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet. He concentrated on landscapes more consistently than any other Impressionist painter. He adopted short rapid Impressionist brushstrokes. He was interested in the movement of foliage, shimmer of water, and the texture of a cloud filled sky.
Sisley’s best-known works are Street in Moret, The Bridge at Moret-sur-Loing, and Sand Heaps. He is regarded as one of the greatest landscape painters of the nineteenth century.
