***February 2008*** |
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Alfred Sisley
October 30, 1839 - January 29, 1899
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Alfred Sisley was born in Paris France on
October 30, 1839 to affluent English parents. His father William
Sisley was in the silk business, and his mother Felicia Sell
was a cultivated music connoisseur. At the the age of 18,
Sisley was sent to London to study a career in business, but
abandoned it after four years and returned to Paris where
he had dreams of becoming a painter. In 1862 at the age of
23 he attended art classes at the atelier of Swiss artist
Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre where he met with fellow art students
Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste
Renoir. The meeting of these four artists would soon lead
to the painting movement that would be eventually called Impressionism.
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Sisley and his new found artist friends started painting landscapes
en plein air (in the open air) in order to realistically capture
the transient effects of sunlight. This approach which was extremely
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 if any opportunities to
exhibit or sell their work. Unlike his fellow students who suffered
financial hardships however, Sisley received an allowance from his
father until 1870. In that year his father’s business had
failed and the financial support he had been accustomed to stopped
abruptly and Sisley's sole means of support then became the sale
of his works and he became increasingly poor as each month went
by. For the remainder of his life he would live in poverty; his
paintings rose significantly in monetary value only after his death. |
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| In 1866 married Eugénie Lesouezec
with whom he had two children. Four years after his marriage
he moved his family 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,
the gentle landscapes appealed to his simple lifestyle and
he continued to paint and draw constantly. |
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Apart from the period spent in London
between 1857 and 1861 where he was majorly influenced by the
paintings of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, Sisley lived
his entire life in France. |
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| Though a founding member of the Impressionists
group, Sisley’s work has tended to be overshadowed by
Monet, whose work his most resembles. Sisley was less experimental,
and tended to work on a smaller scale which may have been
a contributing factor. His concentration on landscape subjects
however was the most consistent of any of the Impressionists.
For most of his life Sisley was content to depict the traditional
activities of countryside and rural waterways as they impinged
on the landscape and never concerned himself with aspects
of society, a place where he never really felt he fit in.
Sisley continued to paint and exhibit with the Impressionists
until January of 1899 when at the age of 59 he died in Moret-sur-Loing,
just a few months after the death of his wife. |
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