Alfred Sisley
Biography

Alfred Sisley, born in 1839, would become one of the most consistent and prolific Impressionist painters leaving behind a legacy of over 900 paintings, 100 pastels and countless drawings.

Born in 1839 to wealthy English parents, his father a silk merchant and his mother a music connoisseur, Sisley grew up privileged in Paris. At 18, Sisley’s father sent him to London to study business, however, he returned to Paris after four years.

Upon Sisley’s return to Paris in 1862, he began his studies at Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts with Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre. While attending Gleyre’s atelier Sisley met Sisley, Monet and Bazille. Defying conventions, Sisley and his colleagues painted en plein air (outdoors) trying to capture the movement of the sun’s light and its effects on the landscape. While many of Sisley’s student works have been lost, one of his most recognized early works, Lane Near a Small Town, was completed in 1864 during his tenure.

In 1866, Sisley began a relationship with Eugenie Lesouzec and shortly thereafter had two children; a son, Pierre in 1867 and a daughter, Jeanne in 1869. While Sisley had been assured a life of financial certainty due to an allowance from his father, the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 forced his father’s business to close leaving Sisley to rely solely on the sale of his paintings to support his family. Despite his acceptance to the Salon in 1868, sales of Sisley’s works were slow and the family lived in poverty.

For the first time since his educational tenure in London, Sisley returned to Britain in 1874 and there painted one of his most recognized series of oil paintings; a collection of twenty oil paintings of the River Thames.

Upon Sisley’s return, in 1880, he moved his family to a small village near Moret-Sur-Loing where he continued to experiment with light and movement. Despite Sisley’s contemporaries often changing mediums and artistic expressions, Sisley remained purely an Impressionist revising his interpretations of light and color rather than abandoning the Impressionist ideology progressively using softer and lighter tones.

In 1897, Sisley and his longtime partner Eugenie traveled to Wales where they married in Cardiff on August 5. While Sisley and his new wife stayed in Penarth, Sisley painted six oil paintings of the sea and cliffs before moving to the Osborne Hotel on Langland Bay in Mid-August. Throughout Sisley’s duration at Langland Bay, he painted at least eleven oil paintings before returning to France in October.

After Sisley’s return to France, he applied two times for French citizenship and was denied both times despite having spent the majority of his life as a resident. Sisley died January 29, 1899 shortly after his wife Eugenie.