Alfred Sisley (/ˈsɪsli/;French:[sislɛ]; 30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899) was anImpressionistlandscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscapeen plein air (i.e., outdoors). He deviated intofigure painting only rarely and, unlikeRenoir andPissarro, he found that Impressionism fulfilled his artistic needs.
Among his important works are a series of paintings of theRiver Thames, mostly aroundHampton Court, executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or nearMoret-sur-Loing. The notable paintings of theSeine 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.[1]
Sisley was born in Paris to affluent British 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, Alfred 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. From 1862, he studied at the ParisÉcole des Beaux-Arts within theatelier of Swiss artistMarc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted withFrédéric Bazille,Claude Monet, andPierre-Auguste Renoir. Together they would paint landscapesen 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 works were usually rejected by the jury of the most importantart exhibition in France, the annualSalon. During the 1860s, though, Sisley was in a better financial position than some of his fellow artists, as he received an allowance from his father.
In 1866, Sisley began a relationship with Eugénie Lescouezec (1834–1898; usually known as Marie Lescouezec), a Breton living in Paris. The couple had two children: son Pierre (born 1867) and daughter Jeanne (1869).[2] At the time, Sisley lived not far from Avenue de Clichy and theCafé Guerbois, the gathering-place of many Parisian painters.
In 1868, his paintings were accepted at the Salon, but the exhibition did not bring him financial or critical success; nor did subsequent exhibitions.[1]
Molesey Weir – Morning, one of the paintings executed by Sisley on his visit to Britain in 1874
In 1870, theFranco-Prussian War began; as a result, Sisley's father's business failed, and the painter's sole means of support became the sale of his works. For the remainder of his life he would live in poverty, as his paintings did not rise significantly in monetary value until after his death.[3] Occasionally, however, Sisley would be backed by patrons, and this allowed him, among other things, to make a few brief trips to Britain.
The first of these occurred in 1874, after the first independent Impressionist exhibition. The result of a few months spent south-west of London was a series of nearly twenty paintings of the non-tidalThames at EastMolesey and below itsHampton Court Bridge where the south bank becomesThames Ditton which was later described by art historianKenneth Clark as "a perfect moment of Impressionism."
Until 1880, Sisley lived and worked in the country west of Paris; then he and his family moved to a small village nearMoret-sur-Loing, close to theforest of Fontainebleau, where the painters of theBarbizon school had worked earlier in the century. Here, as art historianAnne Poulet has said, "the gentle landscapes with their constantly changing atmosphere were perfectly attuned to his talents. Unlike Monet, he never sought the drama of the rampaging ocean or the brilliantly colored scenery of theCôte d'Azur."[4]
In 1881, Sisley made a second brief voyage toGreat Britain.
In 1897, Sisley and his partner visited Britain again, and were finally married inWales atCardiff Register Office on 5 August.[5] They stayed atPenarth, where Sisley painted at least six oils of the sea and the cliffs. In mid-August they moved to the Osborne Hotel atLangland Bay on theGower Peninsula, where he produced at least eleven oil paintings in and around Langland Bay andRotherslade (then called Lady's Cove). They returned to France in October. This was Sisley's last voyage to his ancestral homeland. TheNational Museum Cardiff possesses two of his oil paintings of Penarth and Langland.
The following year Sisley applied for French citizenship, but was refused. A second application was made and supported by a police report, but illness intervened,[6] and Sisley remained a British national until his death.
He died on 29 January 1899 of throat cancer inMoret-sur-Loing at the age of 59, a few months after the death of his wife.
Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 1865
Sisley's student works are lost. His first landscape paintings are sombre, coloured with dark browns, greens, and pale blues. They were often executed atMarly andSaint-Cloud. Little is known about Sisley's relationship with the paintings ofJ. M. W. Turner andJohn Constable, which he may have seen in London, but some have suggested that these artists may have influenced his development as an Impressionist painter,[7] as may haveGustave Courbet andJean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
He was inspired by the style and subject matter of previous modern paintersCamille Pissarro andEdouard Manet.[8] 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.[9] Described by art historianRobert Rosenblum as having "almost a generic character, an impersonal textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting",[10] his work strongly invokes atmosphere, and his skies are always impressive. He concentrated on landscape more consistently than any other Impressionist painter.
Among Sisley's best-known works areStreet in Moret andSand Heaps, both owned by theArt Institute of Chicago, andThe Bridge at Moret-sur-Loing, shown atMusée d'Orsay, Paris.Allée des peupliers de Moret (The Lane of Poplars at Moret) has been stolen three times from theMusée 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).[11]
A large number of fake Sisleys have been discovered. Sisley produced some 900 oil paintings, some 100 pastels and many other drawings.[12]
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'sSoleil de printemps, le Loing (1892) was restored to the family of Louis Hirsch, in a ceremony in Paris.[13][14][15]
In 2008 a dispute erupted between Alain Dreyfus, an art dealer in Switzerland, and the auction house Christie's over a Sisley paintingFirst 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.[16][17]
Also in 2008, the SisleyBateaux 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 asWinter Landscape were known to have been seized by the Nazi looting organisation known as the E.R.R. and still have not been found.[18]
The German Lost Art Foundation has 24 listings for Sisley.[19]
^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. Retrieved12 February 2021 – via lootedart.com.
^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. Retrieved8 May 2021 – via lootedart.com.
^"Alfred Sisley – Results". lootedart.com.Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved12 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.
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