Alfred Sisley

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Alfred Sisley
Sisley in March 1863
Born(1839-10-30)30 October 1839
Paris, France
Died29 January 1899(1899-01-29) (aged 59)
Moret-sur-Loing, France
EducationMarc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre
Known forPainting
MovementImpressionism
PatronsPaul Durand-Ruel, Georges Petit, Jean-Baptiste Faure
Signature

Alfred Sisley (/ˈsɪsli/; French: [sislɛ]; 30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899)[1] was a British-born French Impressionist landscape painter. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (outdoors); he deviated into figure painting only rarely and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, he found that Impressionism fulfilled his artistic needs.

Born to British parents, he spent most of his life in France. Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton Court, executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing. The notable paintings of the Seine and its bridges in the former suburbs of Paris are, like many of his landscapes, characterised by tranquillity in pale shades of green, pink, purple, dusty blue, and cream. Over the years Sisley's power of expression and colour intensity increased.[2]

Life

Sisley was born in Paris[a] on 30 October 1839, the youngest of four children of William Sisley[b], an affluent merchant of imported luxury goods,[c] and Felicia Sell.[d] Little is known of Sisley's childhood in Paris, other than his education was bilingual (French and English).[4]

At the age of 18 (in 1857) Sisley was sent to London to live and study with his English relatives for a career in the family import-export business. According to his confidante and biographer Gustave Geffroy, Sisley 'remained there for a few years, but above all learned painting from Turner and Constable, and literature from Shakespeare's plays.' Having shown no aptitude for business, Sisley returned to Paris in 1861.[5]

Later in 1861 Sisley began studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris within the atelier of Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he befriended Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Frustrated with the bounds of the studio and strictures of the classicist Gleyre, the group (led by Monet)[e] quickly began to make regular excursions to locales around Paris to paint en plein air landscapes (see Works). Unlike his friends Monet and Renoir, Sisley benefited from financial support from his family while studying.[f] Renoir and Sisley became close friends and shared a studio, and Renoir became well known to Sisley's family: William commissioning his portrait from him (see picture).[7]

Painting by Renoir of William Sisley
William Sisley (1864), Renoir, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Painting of Forty-three portraits of painters from the Gleyre studio, including Sisley and Renoir
Quarante-trois portraits de peintres de l'atelier Gleyre (Forty-three portraits of painters from the Gleyre studio) (1856-68), Petit Palais, Paris[g]
A photograph of No.19 de la rue des Trois-Bornes, Paris.
Sisley's birthplace and childhood home, No. 19 de la rue des Trois-Bornes, Paris.

Sisley met his future wife Eugénie Lescouezec (1834–1898)[h] in 1866, while she was working as an artists model and florist[i] living in the Batignolles quarter of Paris. The couple's first child, Pierre, was born in Paris in June 1867 while Sisley was based in Honfleur, Normandy, a picturesque holiday resort popular with painters. Their daughter Jeanne-Adèle was born in January 1869; their second son, Jacques, born November 1871, died in infancy.[9]

Painting by Alfred Sisley The Lesson 1874 showing his children
La Leçon / Portrait of the Artist's Children: The Lesson (c1872), Private collection[j]
Painting by Auguste Renoir Portrait of Jeanne Sisley 1875
Portrait de Jeanne Sisley / Portrait of Jeanne Sisley (c1875) Auguste Renoir, Private collection
Painting by Auguste Renoir Portrait of Pierre Sisley Village Street in Marlotte 1875
Portrait de Pierre Sisley / Portrait of Pierre Sisley (c1875) Auguste Renoir, Private collection

In 1870-71 the financial security that Sisley had enjoyed from his family came to an abrupt end, due either to the calamitous effect the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War had on William Sisley's trading business, or ostracism and enstrangement on the grounds of Eugénie's humble and unmarried status.[12] Sisley's financial position would remain precarious and unstable for the remainder of his life, dependent on the support of patrons, friends and the sale of his works (see Works).

Sisley would visit Britain on three occasions throughout his life. The first occurred in 1874 after the First Impressionist Exhibition, accompanying his patron the opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure to London, producing twenty paintings of the non-tidal Thames at East Molesey around Hampton Court Bridge later described by art historian Kenneth Clark as "a perfect moment of Impressionism."[13][14] A visit to the Isle of Wight in 1881 had to be abandoned when the canvases and materials Sisley had arranged to be shipped from France were never delivered.[15]

The third visit, in the summer of 1897, was undertaken by Alfred and Eugénie towards the end of their lives[k], with Eugénie in the early stages of throat cancer. Sponsored by his patron François Depeaux, who was visiting Cardiff on business, the couple settled in neighbouring Penarth, where Sisley began painting from the cliffs overlooking the town. Sisley made the acquaintance of the French consul in Cardiff Adolphe de Trobiaud,[l] who on 3 August formally certified Eugénie the mother of Alfred's children; two days later Alfred and Eugénie were married at Cardiff Register Office, thereby legitimising their children and securing their inheritance.[m] The couple honeymooned at the Osborne Hotel at Langland Bay on the Gower Peninsula, where Sisley painted in and around Langland Bay and Rotherslade (then called Lady's Cove).[16]

The couple returned to Moret in October 1897. In early 1898 Sisley applied for French citizenship, but was initially refused. A second application later that year was made and supported by a police report, but illness intervened. Alfred Sisley remained a British citizen his entire life.[17]

Eugénie Sisley died on 8 October 1898 and was buried in Moret cemetery the following day. Alfred was by then succumbing to the ravages of throat cancer and was unable to attend the funeral. Alfred Sisley died on 29 January 1899 at the age of 59. His funeral was held on 1 February and attended by his children Jeanne and Pierre joined by his friends Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Jean-Charles Cazin, Albert Lebourg, and Adolphe Tavernier [Fr], and dignitaries from Moret.[18]

In the days before his death, Sisley had spoken with his friend Monet and asked him to take care of his children, who were now left without resources other than the numerous unsold paintings in their father's studio. Monet arranged for a benefit auction to be held at Galerie Georges Petit held on 1 May 1899 for sale of 'Paintings, studies and pastels from his studio and those given to his children by other artists'. The former comprised 27 paintings and 6 pastels by Sisley, the latter numerous works donated at Monet's request by Sisley's friends and contacts across the Impressionist movement[n]. The auction and sales raised 145,000 francs for Sisley's estate.[19]


Painting of Alfred Sisley by Frédéric Bazille c1867
Portrait d'Alfred Sisley / Portrait of Alfred Sisley (c1867-68), Frédéric Bazille[o]
Painting by Auguste Renoir of Alfred Sisley 1874
Alfred Sisley (1864), Auguste Renoir, Kunsthaus Zürich
Painting by Renoir showing Sisley posed with model Lise Tréhot, appearing as a young couple.
Les Fiancés / A Couple (1868), Renoir, Wallraf–Richartz Museum, Cologne[p]
Painting by Claude Monet entitled 'Interior - After dinner' picture Alfred Sisley and others sat round a table
Intérieur, Après dîner / Interior, after Dinner (1868-69), Claude Monet National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Portraits of Sisley by his friends

Works

Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 1865

Sisley's student works are lost. At the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Gleyre Sisley along with Monet, Renoir and Bazille 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. Consequently, Sisley and his friends initially had few opportunities to exhibit or sell their work. Their paintings were usually rejected by the jury of the most important art exhibition in France, the annual Salon.His first landscape paintings are sombre, coloured with dark browns, greens, and pale blues. They were often executed at Marly and Saint-Cloud. Little is known about Sisley's relationship with the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, which he may have seen in London, but some have suggested that these artists may have influenced his development as an Impressionist painter,[22] as may have Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Molesey Weir – Morning, one of the paintings executed by Sisley on his visit to Britain in 1874

He was inspired by the style and subject matter of previous modern painters Camille Pissarro and Édouard Manet.[23] 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.[24] Described by art historian Robert Rosenblum as having "almost a generic character, an impersonal textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting",[25] his work strongly invokes atmosphere, and his skies are always impressive. He concentrated on landscape more consistently than any other Impressionist painter.

La Seine au point du jour, 1877, Musée Malraux, Le Havre

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 – once in 1978 when on loan in Marseilles (recovered a few days later in the city's sewers), again in 1998 (when the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years with two accomplices), and finally in August 2007 (on 4 June 2008 French police recovered it and three other stolen paintings from a van in Marseilles).[26]

A large number of fake Sisleys have been discovered. Sisley produced some 900 oil paintings, some 100 pastels and many other drawings.[27]

During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a number of Sisley works were taken from Jewish art collectors by Nazis or their agents as part of the massive looting of Jews that preceded the Holocaust. On 18 June 2004 Sisley's Soleil de printemps, le Loing (1892) was restored to the family of Louis Hirsch, in a ceremony in Paris.[28][29][30]

In 2008 a dispute erupted between Alain Dreyfus, an art dealer in Switzerland, and the auction house Christie's over a Sisley painting First Day of Spring in Moret, that was claimed by the Lindon family in court in Paris. Dreyfus said that Christie's had not sufficiently examined the work's history, or provenance, before putting it up for sale.[31][32]

Also in 2008, the Sisley Bateaux en Réparation à Saint Mammès (1885) was recognised as having been looted by the Nazis and the subject of a settlement with the heirs of Benno and Frances Bernstein who had owned it before Nazi occupation.

Numerous Sisleys such as Winter Landscape were known to have been seized by the Nazi looting organisation known as the E.R.R. and still have not been found.[33]

The German Lost Art Foundation has 24 listings for Sisley.[34]

Resting by a Stream at the Edge of the Wood, 1878, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Exhibitions

Significant retrospective exhibitions of Sisley's works include:

  • Alfred Sisley retrospective (2000) - Isetan Museum, Tokyo: 2 March to 17 April 2000; Takamatsu City Art Museum, Kagawa: 22 April to 21 May 2000; Hiroshima Museum of Art: 27 May to 2 July 2000; The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama: 8 July to 10 September 2000.[37]

Selected works

Notes, references and sources

Notes

  1. ↑ At 19 Rue des Trois-Bornes [fr] in the 4th (now 11th) arrondissement. The house is marked by a commemorative plaque.[3] Alfred was the only of William and Felicia's children to be born in France: Elizabeth-Emily (the oldest) and Henry (1832) were born in Dover, Aline-Frances (1834) in London.
  2. ↑ Born near Dunkirk on 6 December 1799.
  3. ↑ Previous generations of the Sisley family had engaged in cross-Channel smuggling of luxury goods between Kent and France, later trading from legitimate offices based in London and Paris.
  4. ↑ Felicia, 19 years old when she married William (her cousin) in 1827, was described as 'quite the French woman' (who went by Felicété), and a 'fine tall woman' with developed music and literary tastes.
  5. ↑ "'Let's get out of here' I told them. 'This place is unhealthy: there's no sincerity here.' We left after.a fortnight of lessons of this kind." - Monet recounting to French newspaper Excelsior (journal) [fr] in 1921.[6]
  6. ↑ Bazille's family were wealthy wine merchants.
  7. ↑ Sisley is third from the left on the third row, painted by Cabat. Renoir is directly below Sisley facing right.
  8. ↑ Marie Louise Adelaide Eugenie Lescouezec, born 17 October 1834 in Toul.
  9. ↑ Renoir reportedly descibed her as: "She had a very sensitive nature and was exceedingly well bred. She had taken up posing because her family had been ruined in some financial venture."[8]
  10. ↑ This painting of his children is the only known extant portrait by Sisley.[10] Sisley's children reputedly also appear in two paintings made by Sisley in the countryside outside Louveciennes in 1873: Enfants jouant dans la prairie / Children playing in the meadow or Country Road, Springtime, Private Collection and Printemps à Bougival / Spring at Bougival, Philadelphia Museum of Art.[11]
  11. ↑ Alfred was 57, Eugénie 62.
  12. ↑ A reference in one of his letters indicates that Sisley was introduced to de Tobiaud by his daughter Jeanne, who may have travelled with them.
  13. ↑ It was significantly easier for Sisley to marry as a British citizen in Wales than France, and doing so in Cardiff avoided any unwanted publicity.
  14. ↑ Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Guillaumin, Degas each donated works
  15. ↑ Destroyed in the Second World War[20]
  16. ↑ Also known as The Engaged Couple or Alfred Sisley and his Wife, showing Sisley posed with model Lise Tréhot.[21]

References

  1. ↑ Romane-Musculus 1974; Sisley 1949; Shone 1992, pp. 224, 231.
  2. ↑ Shone 1992.
  3. ↑ "Plaque at 19 rue des Trois-Bornes, Paris". Wikicommons.
  4. ↑ Sisley 1949; Shone 1992, pp. 13–18.
  5. ↑ Geffroy 1923, p. 9; Duret 1919, p. 69; Shone 1992, p. 19; Stevens 2017, pp. 9, 259.
  6. ↑ Geffroy, pp. 9–10.
  7. ↑ Shone 1992, pp. 21–28; Stevens 2017, p. 8.
  8. ↑ Renoir, Jean (1962). Renoir, my father. Boston: Little Brown. p. 120.
  9. ↑ Shone 1992, pp. 39–40; Stevens 2017, pp. 261–262.
  10. ↑ Stevens 1992, pp. 8, 84.
  11. ↑ Rewald 1973, p. 270; Shone 1992, pp. 53–54.
  12. ↑ Shone 1992, pp. 42–43; Stevens 2017, pp. 8, 18.
  13. ↑ Clark, Kenneth (1949). Landscape into Art. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 90.
  14. ↑ Shone 1992, p. 67.
  15. ↑ Riopelle & Sumner 2008, p. 32; Shone 1992, p. 141.
  16. ↑ Riopelle & Sumner 2008, pp. 37–49; Shone 1992, p. 188; Stevens 1992, p. 279.
  17. ↑ Stevens 1992, p. 280.
  18. ↑ Shone 1992, pp. 195–197; Stevens 1992, pp. 287–288.
  19. ↑ Shone 1992, pp. 199–200; Stevens 1992, p. 281.
  20. ↑ White 1996, p. 270.
  21. ↑ Distel 1990, p. 53; Shone 1992, p. 39.
  22. ↑ Turner 2000, p. 401.
  23. ↑ Haine, Scott (2000). The History of France (1st ed.). Greenwood Press. pp. 112. ISBN 0-313-30328-2.
  24. ↑ Bomford et al. 1990, p. 203.
  25. ↑ Rosenblum 1979, p. 306.
  26. ↑ "French National Pleads Guilty to International Stolen Art Conspiracy". Earth Times. 10 July 2008. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. Retrieved 8 August 2007.
  27. ↑ Daulte 1959, p. 82.
  28. ↑ "Restitution d'un tableau d'Alfred Sisley". Le Monde (in French). 19 June 2004. Retrieved 12 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  29. ↑ Darmon, Adrian. "Un Sisley volé par les Nazis refait surface" [A Sisley stolen by the Nazis resurfaces]. artcult.fr (in French). Archived from the original on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 12 February 2021 – via lootedart.com.
  30. ↑ Meaux, Lorraine de (22 March 2018). Une grande famille russe. Les Gunzburg (in French). Place des éditeurs. ISBN 978-2-262-07616-0.
  31. ↑ Moynihan, Colin (3 June 2018). "Did Christie's Do Its Homework? Buyer of Nazi-Tainted Work Says No". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 4 June 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  32. ↑ Herzberg, Nathaniel (28 May 2018). "Un Sisley vole par les nazis embarrasse Christie's" [A Sisley stolen by the Nazis embarrasses Christie's]. Le Monde (in French). Archived from the original on 1 May 2019. Retrieved 8 May 2021 – via lootedart.com.
  33. ↑ "Alfred Sisley – Results". lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2021. Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)
    Winter Landscape
    Painting
    Oil
    39 × 56 cm
    Sign.: Sisley
    Status: The object is looted. Its current location is unknown.
    Provenance: Confiscated by the ERR from unknown collection, Paris. Arthur Pfannstiel, Paris painter and art dealer, received from an exchange with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), 17 March 1941, Paris.
  34. ↑ "Lost Art Internet Database – Einfache Suche – Sisley". lostart.de. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  35. ↑ "Sisley". Musée d'Orsay. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  36. ↑ Stevens 1992.
  37. ↑ Senzoku & Restellini 2000.
  38. ↑ "Alfred Sisley: Poeta dell'Impressionismo". Palazzo dei Diamanti. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  39. ↑ "Sisley. Poet of Impressionism". Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  40. ↑ Stevens & Dumas 2002.
  41. ↑ "Sisley in England and Wales". National Gallery. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  42. ↑ Riopelle & Sumner 2008.
  43. ↑ "Exhibitions - review". Von der Heydt Museum. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  44. ↑ Finckh 2011.
  45. ↑ "Sisley: The Impressionist". Caumont, Centre d'Art. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  46. ↑ "Alfred Sisley (1839-1899): Impressionist Master" (PDF) (Press release). Bruce Museum. 2 January 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2026.
  47. ↑ Stevens 2017.

Sources

Biographies and biographical articles

Cogniat, Raymond (1978). Sisley (in French). Naefels, Switzerland: Bonfini. ISBN 9780517533215.

Geffroy, Gustave (1923). Sisley (in French). Paris: Cahiers d'aujourd'hui.

Romane-Musculus, Paul (July–September 1974). "Généalogie des Sisley". Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français (in French). 120: 458–463. JSTOR 24294236 – via JSTOR.

Shone, Richard (1992). Sisley. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 9780714838922.

Sisley, Claude (September 1949). "The Ancestry of Alfred Sisley". The Burlington Magazine. 91 (558): 248–252. JSTOR 870068 – via JSTOR.

Catalogues raisonnés / critical catalogues

Brame, Silvie; Lorenceau, François (2021). Alfred Sisley catalogue critique des peintures et des pastels [Alfred Sisley: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels] (in French). Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris; Brame & Lorenceau. ISBN 9782884532280.

Daulte, François. (1959). Alfred Sisley: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint [Alfred Sisley: Reasoned catalogue of painted work] (in French). Lausanne: Durand-Ruel.

Exhibition catalogues

Finckh, Gerhard (2011). Alfred Sisley: Der Wahre Impressionist [Alfred Sisley: the True Impressionist] (in German). Wuppertal: Von der Heydt Museum. ISBN 9783892020806.

Senzoku, Nobuyuki; Restellini, Marc (2000). Exposition Alfred Sisley (in French and Japanese). Tokyo: Art Life. OCLC 76892604.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

Reed, Nicholas (2008). Sisley on the Thames and Welsh coast. Folkestone: Lilburn Press. ISBN 978-1-901167-20-7.

Riopelle, Christopher; Sumner, Ann (2008). Sisley in England and Wales. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9781857094138.

Stevens, MaryAnne, ed. (1992). Alfred Sisley. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300052442.

Stevens, MaryAnne; Dumas, Ann, eds. (2002). Sisley: Poeta del Impressionismo [Sisley: Poet of Impressionism] (in Spanish). Madrid: Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza. ISBN 9788488474889.

Stevens, MaryAnne, ed. (2017). Alfred Sisley: Impressionist Master. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300215571.

General histories

Bomford, David; Kirby, Jo; Leighton, John; Roy, Ashok; White, Raymond (1990). Impressionism. London: National Gallery. ISBN 9780300050356.

Denvir, Bernard (2000). The Chronicle of Impressionism: an intimate diary of the lives and world of the great artists. London: Thames Hudson. ISBN 0500282145.

Distel, Anne (1990). Impressionism: the first collectors. New York: H.N. Abrams. ISBN 0810931605.

Duret, Theodore (1919). Histoire des peintres impressionnistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cezanne, Guillaumin (in French). Paris: H. Floury.

Poulet, Anne L.; Murphy, Alexandra R. (1979). Corot to Braque: French Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Boston. ISBN 0-87846-134-5.

Rewald, John (1973). The History of Impressionism (4th ed.). New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Rosenblum, Robert (1979). Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 1-55670-099-7.

Turner, Jane (2000). From Monet to Cézanne: late 19th-century French artists (Grove Dictionary of Art). New York: Grove. ISBN 0-312-22971-2.

White, Barbara Ehrlich (1996). Impressionists side by side: their friendships, rivalries, and artistic exchanges. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0679443177.

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